Welcome!

We do indeed, have friends in low places.  Our friends, however, are in a different kind of low place than one might initially think of. They're often on their hands and knees weeding or planting or looking closely at a bloom or leaf!  You can't be a gardener without stooping to 'low places'!  There are lots and lots of folks that we are indebted to, so many who have helped us, guided us, and yes, corrected us!   But if you go through our website thoroughly, you will come across three names with a certain amount of frequency. (And the 4th friend is 'Hips' the Cat who has run of the garden at Jack Potter's House and shows up on patrol in many of his terrific photos!)

We want to introduce you (if you aren't already familiar with them) so that when we say, "Dick said", or "Cole suggests" or "Jack grows this", you'll know to pay attention -- these three men know whereof they speak!  

Note:  While within our website, we encourage and depend on your using your Browser's 'Back Button'. However, because some of the following links leave our site, we just have each of them open in their own window so you don't get lost!

Award winning Horticulture author garden designer, photographer, and naturalist. Formerly curator at the U.S. National Arboretum and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.  He leads garden tours around the world, writes articles for all the best Gardening Magazines and has a TDF (To Die For) garden near us at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

He's probably told me I was wrong more times than my Mother and each time, I'm grateful instead of insulted!

He introduced us to the concept of a Tropical Garden up here in our cold area and his is a beauty!  

See Ketzel Levine's photo of Cole in a very Low Place. in case for one second you doubted that we have friends in LOW places!

Thanks a bunch Cole!

Horticulturist, photographer and former Curator of Scott Arboretum until 1992.  For years, before taking the horticulturist position there, he was part-time gardener for John and Gertrude Wister, whose private garden on the edge of the Swarthmore campus was part of the arboretum collections. 

And he's THE Potter of Buddleia 'Potter's Purple' which he discovered in the Wister Garden in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, in 1984.

Not only is he a gardener but a fabulous photographer and many of his photos grace our website including the above photo of one of "his friends in low places" - in this case, his cat, Hips.

Plus he kindly sends us cuttings of plants he thinks we can't live without!

Jack now gardens in New York.

Thanks so much, Jack! (and Hips)

Horticulturist and Botanist with the Arnold Arboretum, author of numerous articles on ornamentals. PhD from Duke University, he's now working as a taxonomist with the Florida Dept. of Agriculture. Former owner of the original and wonderful We-Du Nursery.  

Dick is particularly helpful in identifying plants. He knows all of those little anatomical parts that seem to change from species to species that often totally confuse us!  

A number of our favorite parent plants came from him when he owned We-Du and one, in particular, we've renamed in his honor, since it turned out to be a mis-identified Epimedium seedling.  It's a beauty!

Epimedium x 'Dream Weaver'

Another, Pinellia x 'Poly Spout' has a waiting list it's so fabulous!

Thanks Dick!