Perennial Favorites is 30 years old this year! We filed our first business tax return in 1987, and made about $300 that first year…so there was really nowhere to go but up. We moved to Colorado to leave the city behind, and to grow plants. We were at the tail end of the back-to-the-land movement that began when we were in college.
Initially we thought we’d have a truck farm, and grow organic produce, but after a couple of springs here we realized growing vegetables in the open garden, in the shadow of Greenhorn Mountain, would not be a very profitable venture. Our first tomato crop was destroyed by frost. We replanted and hail took that round out. We planted more tomatoes and the grasshoppers ate them down to the ground. It was discouraging.
At that time, Merrilee’s brother owned a landscaping business in Colorado Springs, and he got us started on the path to growing ground covers. Perennials were much more adapted to our short growing season than tomatoes and thus Perennial Favorites was born!
We still follow our organic beginnings, using the most eco-friendly fertilizers and botanical insecticides we can find.
You will find no GMO plants or seeds at our nursery. GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism, and is a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. The foreign genes may come from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans. At this point there is too little information to understand whether this is safe or dangerous to humans and to the environment, so we are staying far away from anything GMO.
While we’re very cautious about the pest control we use, even eco-friendly botanical ones, we do use conventional fertilizer in the summer on our ornamental container plants when the bears are out and about. Bears love the smell of organic fertilizer and will destroy greenhouses and plants to get to it. We only use organic fertilizers on our herbs and vegetables plants, but we don’t fertilize them in bear season. We’ve never used conventional herbicides here at the nursery, and while weeding can be challenging, we still think it is the right decision for us, our employees, and the birds and animals that share this space with us.
Perennial Favorites garden at the fall sale.
Merrilee, Xander, and native grasses.
You can email us at [email protected]
Or call us at 719-489-3843 for more information.
Hope to see you at the nursery this spring,
Diana Capen, Merrilee Barnett, and all the gang at Perennial Favorites
