NARGS Traveling Speaker Esther Benedict

Program On Propagation

Hosted by The Columbia-Willamette Chapter of NARGS

Alaska members check your email for the zoom link

Esther Bio: I live on a small farm in northern Indiana with my husband, Robert. I am a self taught gardener, gleaning information from books, magazines, trial and error, and many
wonderful people who are willing to share their knowledge. Robert and I enjoy seeing
plants in their natural habitat, and visiting botanical gardens, nurseries, and private
gardens. We belong to the Great Lakes Chapter of NARGS.

I grew up with gardening. Every year, my mom would let each child pick something
exotic or fun from the seed catalog. I can remember vegetable spaghetti, peanuts, Indian
corn, gourds, cotton, cacti, and giant watermelons. Rock gardening came much later, after
marriage and buying a property. While raising a family, the gardening was centered
around veggies and annuals, but then I started branching out into seed starting and
perennials. I saw a brief article in a gardening magazine about rock gardening and one of
the sources mentioned was Trenoll Nursery near Trenton, Ohio. We visited there and I
was introduced to alpines by the owner, Dorothy Parker. I made a sizable purchase and,
as we were leaving, Dorothy stuffed a grocery bag in my arms. It was half full of
NARGS quarterlies, each full of pictures of incredible plants that I never dreamed
existed… I was hooked!
I enjoy seed starting and propagating and found out I could not only support my hobby
but also expand it by turning it into a business. Sometimes it is a fine line between the
two.