Newsletter Archive | Home | Back

Greetings once again. Well again a huge thanks for all of your business so far this year. One of the best ways to preserve rare and unusual plants is to distribute them throughout the gardening community, and it is great to have a hand in sending seeds all over the world. It is very exciting to receive emails from happy customers who have had quick high germination rates! It is also a lot of fun to learn what plants other people are interested in through correspondence with all of you seed experimenters.

After an astoundingly warm, sunny and dry late winter and early spring, prompting a drought emergency and an almost complete meltdown of snow on which to ski (and more importantly snowboard); a dramatic change in our weather pattern has just returned us to the cool stormy weather we should have had in February. While everyone is blaming El Niño as if unusual weather has never occurred in the Northwest before, I have been thoroughly enjoying the chance to get on top of outdoor projects in the garden as well as working on a nursery that I hope to launch soon! Overall it is an early spring in the Pacific Northwest, but that is a good thing for gardeners because it usually means a long spring (if we're lucky summer will arrive on time July 5th)!

I have received a number of suggestions on the web site (a popular one being "The background makes it hard to read"). While there is no perfect way to design a web site, I like the simple "list format" of the plant descriptions and I think I will basically stick to this, though I will have to divide the list up as I add more content and pictures. Another request has been for larger pictures. I have a plan for how I intend to achieve this but it will take many months, so your patience is appreciated! I am always happy to receive your thoughts on this. You can be honest, remembering that input does not necessarily mean implementaion....LOL!

I'm already excitedly planning my next collection trip for this coming fall. I have a road atlas full of plant names that I have written in tiny print! Thanks to the wonders of WiFi internet I hope to provide trip updates on this page while I am actually on the trip! But I'm not going anywhere until probably September - there's no point going on a collecting trip until the plants actually have seed.

Well that's it for now. I must also thank all of you who have put in a good word for Ian's Rare Seeds on the internet and spread the word. I appreciate it!

May your plants live long and prosper, Ian.