if you want more info, try the GW NWforum. this makes me so sad, but i'm holding on for hope because those PNW gardeners are a very smart, resourceful group.

best, mindy

Date: May 30, 2006 11:46:28 AM PDT

Subject: Heronswood To Move Operation East

For Immediate Release

HERONSWOOD TO

MOVE

OPERATIONS EAST

Seattle, WA - May 30, 2006 -- Heronswood Nursery, in

Kingston, WA, today announced that it is moving its

operations to Pennsylvania to better serve a national

clientele of home gardeners.

According to George Ball, president of W.

Atlee Burpee & Co., the Pennsylvania based

home gardening company that purchased

Heronswood six years ago, "As the business of

Heronswood expanded outside the Northwest,

we found it inefficient to fulfill orders

nationally and continue to conduct operations in

the State of Washington."

The move, which is expected to take place over

the next three months, will enable Heronswood

to expand its product line to include varieties

better suited to flourish under varied weather

conditions. "We shall benefit from a major

expansion and more appropriate climate

location on the East Coast," Mr. Ball states.

"The plants we've collected from around the

world will be tested under conditions more

similar to those of our customers."

Burpee operates a 50-acre nursery in Willow

Hill, PA, and a similar sized test and display

garden complex at Fordhook Farm in

Doylestown, PA.

Heronswood will retain a reduced staff of employees in

Kingston, until the move is completed to insure a smooth

transition. All events planned for the remainder of the 2006

Season at the nursery have been cancelled.

The Heronswood Open at Fordhook Farm, July

14th & 15th, in Doylestown, PA, will be held

as planned, according to Mr. Ball, and the

move will in no way affect the Heronswood

catalog or website which was completely

revamped and upgraded for the 2007

season.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

World-famous Heronswood Nursery closes

Owners plan to relocate it, but new site may be online only

By GORDY HOLT

P-I REPORTER

It was barely 2 o'clock Tuesday and the news had yet to sink in, but Dan Hinkley was already on his second beer.

Heronswood, the world-renowned Kingston plant nursery founded by Hinkley, and a place treasured across the Northwest and around the world for its collection of exotic plants, had just been closed by the Philadelphia-based Burpee seed company.

Meryl Schenker / P-I

The famed Heronswood Nursery is home to a number of exotic plants. These Helleborus are from the Baltic states.

After hearing of the closure, Hinkley was not without words although he was, he said, "still in shock."

"Yeah, obviously, it's very sad for me," he said. "They didn't even afford me the opportunity to see the news release."

The organization had bought Heronswood Nursery from Hinkley, a world-class plant hunter, and his partner, Robert Jones, six years ago with a promise to keep things as they were, with Hinkley still hunting down rare plants for the nursery's collection while Jones ran the business end.

Well, things change, said George Ball, president of the W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the nation's oldest and arguably most successful home-gardening company.

"But we're not closing it, we're just moving it," he said.

Turns out the move may be to online only.

Hans Miller, Burpee's vice president, said Tuesday that the company has no immediate plan to open a Heronswood nursery in Pennsylvania, where the company has a 50-acre nursery at Willow Hill and a similar-size test and display garden at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown.

Burpee will test the market for a Heronswood facility at an event dubbed the Heronswood Hydrangea Open at Fordhook Farm, July 14-15.

If it doesn't test well, Miller said, "Heronswood will just be a Web mail-order site."

As Ball spoke into the business end of his cell phone from Kingston on Tuesday, the Burpee president said he was helping with the packing.

"When we purchased this six years ago," he said, "we were anxious to make it a profitable company that would be fulfilling our ambition to serve a national audience of gardeners, which is predominantly on the East Coast. For six years we worked away at it. But finally we decided the best thing would be that we relocate."

Among Hinkley's associates hard hit by Tuesday's news was Sarah Reichard, a specialist in the biology of invasive organisms at the UW's College of Forest Resources.

"This is not a good thing for Heronswood," she said. "I'm a major customer, but I guess I won't be anymore."

In recent years Hinkley leaned heavily on Reichard to determine which of the plant species he had been gathering might threaten the Northwest's native species.

"He has been very responsible," she said. "Going through his catalog -- what, now, seven or eight years? -- I've identified 15 or so species I was concerned about, and he took them out of his collection and marked another 200 as potentially a problem. At no time was there any pushback. He simply said, 'It's up to you, if that's what you think.' "

Hinkley said he won't be wanting for things to do, even though his contract with Burpee included a five-year non-compete clause that will keep him from creating another nursery during that period. His lecture schedule and two more books will fill the bill for a while.

Less is known about the future of Heronswood's famed display gardens. Burpee's president was circumspect.

"Oh," he said, "we're not digging things up to ship back East. No. I'm hoping to keep this as long as we can, hoping to find ... let's say ... someone who wants to buy one of the few first-class private botanic gardens certainly in America if not the world.

"But I haven't figured all that out yet."

Heronswood was founded on little more than a leaf and a prayer in 1987 while Hinkley taught horticulture classes at Edmonds Community College, and Jones, a University of Washington-trained architect, kept his pencils sharp at a Seattle architecture firm.

In dribs and drabs, one species at a time, the nursery's catalog was built and its display garden took shape. Then, almost before either knew it, their knowledge and expertise earned them recognition throughout the plant world.

The photoless catalogs Hinkley produced annually had become collector's items. And through essays, books and his Heronswood Web site, Hinkley has kept the public abreast of his Indiana Jones-like hunt for fine but little-known plants.

China, Nepal and South Africa are just some of the places Hinkley and his trowel traveled after he graduated with a master's degree from the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture.

From China, for example, came this communique:

Truly, there is no excuse. I should have been more mentally prepared for what they meant. "Road Bad," we were told. "Road Bad" embraces a great deal of plasticity across this planet. I knew this. "Road Bad" in China translates to 180 miles of barely passable terrain, all of which is under construction, though no one seems to be working on it. Then add three days of torrential rains."

Did he get his plant? He goes on:

Our minds drifted from the moment, fast-forwarding to the most aggravating part of the process. Phytosanitary certificates, inspections, lost packages, changed rules at the USDA. Our bellies hurt down deep with anxiety. We know these hurdles possess the potential to mar the polish of the days we have experienced in Sichuan. Yet, this time at least, the buff and shine of this most incredible journey has remained intact. The seeds are now safely to Heronswood and sown.

But now there is no longer a Heronswood where they can set roots and produce offspring for the rest of the world to enjoy.

LOCAL REACTION

The reaction to the closure Tuesday of Kingston's world-famous Heronswood Nursery:

Sarah Reichard, UW professor and invasive-plant specialist: "Dan Hinkley is a hero in American horticulture. He's made an enormous contribution. I've seen the impact. So this is a shocking way to treat a hero."

Marty Wingate, P-I garden writer: "Dan Hinkley expanded the number of plants available to gardeners. This has been our showcase nursery for new and unusual plants, plants few had seen before Dan introduced them."

Duane Kelly, founder and owner, Northwest Flower & Garden Show: "It's hard to see their business logic."

Ciscoe Morris, P-I garden columnist: "It's a bummer."

Jens Molbak, CEO of Molbak's garden center in Woodinville: "We feel sick."

P-I reporter Gordy Holt can be reached at 206-448-8356 or gordyholt@seattlepi.com.