New beginnings

March 24, 2017 at 2:09 PM (art, blog, design, floral, flowers, garden, glass, glass art, Glass Gardens NW, nurseries, plants)
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Hello my blog post followers. It’s Barbara Sanderson writing this to you today.

I spent a few days last week at the Northwest Flower & Garden show helping friends to create their show garden and to represent a common pollinator in their Bug’s Life themed garden (picture above). It was so nice to be able to finally attend the show and have time to take pictures, shop and attend seminars for the first time in 15 years. While I loved having a booth at the show it was always frustrating to not be able to have time outside the booth to fully enjoy the show’s offerings.

It was also nice to run into several of you during my time at the show and answer your many questions about the status of Glass Gardens NW.  I realized that I should probably update everyone I can through this blog and email on happenings since the sale was finalized at the end June last year.

In deciding to sell Glass Gardens NW I wanted to make sure that the business and all of my designs would continue to be available to anyone interested in adding to their collections. I also had many wholesale customers who wanted assurances that items would continue to be available to them to sell in their stores and nurseries across North America.

As many of you are already aware, that is no longer the case. Due to impending legal proceedings I cannot go into much detail about what happened but rest assured I did everything in my power to provide help and assistance to the new owners to ease the transition phase. Despite my frequent offers of help, after the first couple of weeks of July they no longer wanted my help, refused to listen to my advice and stopped communicating with me. Apparently they have stopped communicating with many of you as well.

To say the last 6 months have been emotionally difficult for me is a gross understatement. I have witnessed the death of my “baby” despite taking great pains to structure the sale to ensure a successful transition. These efforts included an agreement to finance the sale and laid out the terms of my availability to help with production of existing designs and product.
 
In the past few months, it appears that the company website and online store was taken down and the business phone number disconnected. Washington State Department of Revenue recently reached out to me looking for the new owner’s contact information since they have apparently failed to pay their quarterly sales tax and are now in arrears with the state.
 
The buyers stopped making their contractual payments to me two months after taking possession of the business. Since the loan to buy the business was guaranteed by a family member in Mississippi, legal action is being pursued there. Hopefully there will be a resolution before summer.
Despite all of that bad news, I have been blessed for the first time in many years to have the luxury of time for myself. I have gotten used to having no strict daily routine and I thoroughly enjoyed last fall in my garden with Ginger. This is the first spring that I will have all the time I want to spend in my garden and gosh knows it’s needed out there!
When I sold the business my plan was to take a couple of months off, take a celebratory road trip and then start researching and planning my next business ideas. I am living on a meager budget at this time since I have no income or ability to create income yet. But I am working on new business ideas and spending my time taking courses in web and graphic design which has always been of interest to me. The celebration and road trip will have to wait until the lawsuit is finished but I am looking forward to that time.
new beginnings
In the meantime I have been asked by a couple of my friends to be a sales representative for their garden products. I am eager to use my existing contacts from Glass Gardens days to help promote these small independent women owned businesses and help expand their customer bases. One is Eco-Lawn, an extremely drought tolerant grass seed mix. It is easy to grow in any soil or light condition, requires no fertilizer and very little water once established. It is also very slow growing so mowing is rarely needed if at all (unmowed Eco-Lawn looks great in yards).
 
The other product is created by my friend Annie Haven. She is a female rancher in California who creates Authentic Haven Brand Moo Poo tea fertilizer. I have used her products for years with great success in my flower, bulb and vegetable gardens.

If you have a favorite nursery in the greater northwest region and would like to see either of these products at your local nursery please send me a note and I will contact them.

I hope to see you at future garden openings and plant sales this spring and summer since I miss you all. Thanks once more for all of your support over the years. I am sorry that things did not continue as planned, hoped and expected but I look forward to one day visiting a hotshop somewhere and play with glass for fun. In the meantime my personal glass website remains: Barbara Sanderson Glass . You can also reach me through my new personal email (barbthecanuck@gmail.com) or by phone at (425)375-1423.

Take care everyone and happy spring to you!

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A day off in Spring!

April 30, 2012 at 6:14 AM (blog, design, floral, flowers, garden, nurseries, pictures, plants)
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Craig and I are both small business owners and that means finding time to take a whole day off from work for both of us at the same time is rare. But we managed to accomplish that yesterday and took a day trip to Port Townsend on the Kitsap Penninsula. We were lucky to not have to wait in line at the ferry in Edmonds and made it to Kingston just in time to stop for a lovely breakfast at the Granola Factory. They have a wonderful view of the water from their front porch tables.

They also have fantastic handmade pastries, muffins, brownies, granola, cakes, cookies and trail mixes. After sampling the different granola flavors we came home with a bag of Mirracole Morsels Gluten free Cranberry Pecan Granola – Yum!

Then we headed on to Port Townsend and headed to their lovely Farmer’s Market held Saturdays (April to December) from 9am to 2pm. They have over 70 vendors each week.  Including a nice selection from 40 farms, 4 artisan cheese makers, 3 cideries, artisan bakers, espresso and coffee, herbal salves, soaps, arts and crafts, and local music. We picked up some local veggie starts and fresh vegetables. More information about the market is here: PTSM

While at the market we discovered Eaglemount Wine and Cider and decided to take a side trip to their tasting room just east of Chimacum. We sampled some of their ciders and one of their wines. We loved the ciders so much that we bought three different flavors to take home. The Pear (Perry) has a nice hint of fresh pears that are grown on their property.  I fell in love with the Ginger Apple Cider which gave the Apple flavor a bit of a kick. And we both liked the full flavor of the Raspberry Apple Cider. All of the ciders are 8% alcohol and lightly carbonated. They use exclusively organic fruit, most of which is grown on their property. For more information here is their website: Eaglemount

The last part of our day was spent at Far Reaches Farm where we were delighted to experience SO many rare and unusual plants! Sue Milliken and Kelly Dodson do such a great job finding, propagating and growing their cultivars that it’s difficult to limit your choices to the size of your pocketbook! They also have a great shade display garden that showcases shady plants in a natural setting and gives you a good idea how the grown up plants will look

Here are some more closeups of some of my favorites from their shade display garden
Podophyllum delavayi

Great combination

My favorite

Looks prehistoric!

Fantastic contrast in colors

I love the greens!

So get ready for some more  eye candy plant lovers….in my next blog I will show you my purchases from Far Reaches Farm!

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Veggie Garden Building – Part 2

August 30, 2011 at 9:33 AM (art, blog, design, floral, flowers, garden, plants, Uncategorized)
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We have been lucky to have incredibly nice weather this past weekend so I was able to finish up my new veggie patch!  First we decided to move our small greenhouse up into this area so everything would be closer together and the greenhouse would be in a sunnier location.  So that meant more digging up grass and weeds and leveling the soil in a 6′ X 8′ area. We laid cardboard and weedblock down before moving the greenhouse to it’s new location.

Greenhouse relo

Greenhouse relo

Then I returned to finishing up the locations for the galvanized tubs. First I started by digging and leveling the soil and applying several layers of cardboard.

Then I placed weedblock fabric on top of the cardboard and placed 4 concrete blocks down to provide some more height to the containers.

Before placing the containers in place I drilled many holes in the bottom for drainage.  Make sure to do this on top of a tarp or something that will hold all those sharp little metal flecks from drilling the holes.

Then I checked to make sure everything was still level and I collected empty plastic bottles to help fill some space in the bottom of the containers.

And here’s the filled containers planted with my fall veggie starts including beets, cauliflower, chard, leeks, and bok choy.

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Veggie Garden building

August 22, 2011 at 1:45 PM (art, blog, design, floral, garde, glass, pictures)
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I am so lucky to have just over an acre of land in which to garden.  When I first moved here the previous owners loved grass – long expanses of water guzzling grass.  There were some garden beds around the perimeter of the yard but not a lot of inspiration in those beds – mostly northwest standbys of large rhododendrons, ferns and some fuchsias here and there.  There were no ground covers which meant I spent endless hours trying to stay ahead of weed growth.  Also there was no irrigation system anywhere in the garden.  Apparently the previous owner would hand water the entire garden! Being a busy small business owner I had no time for hand watering and we installed a drip sprinkler system the first year we moved in. It has made everything so much easier.

We built three raised vegetable beds about 4 years ago and have enjoyed eating our fresh vegetables every year.  Being vegetarians we eat more vegetables than those three beds and a few containers can hold.  But we are lucky to have lots of area of full sun yard where only bad grass and weeds currently flourish.  One area fairly close to the house is in full sun and is bordered by fence on two sides.  After consulting with some garden pals and doing some research I decided to build a veggie garden in galvanized containers in this area.

I decided to tackle this project in stages and thought I could start with two galvanized troughs. My local feed store had a sale on the 4 foot diameter troughs that are 2 feet deep so I started by measuring and picking a site for two troughs.

Pre veggie patch picture - a mess of weeds and moss

Unfortunately the previous owners had used grass turf in this area years ago which made using my rototiller impossible due to the plastic mesh just under the surface.  Took a little longer but I managed to get the top layer of weeds and grass removed.

A couple of hours later post digging - Ginger is exhausted!

Stay tuned for more progress soon!  I need to level the area and find a friend with a truck to get these large troughs home!

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