Renee Shepherd is a gardening entrepreneur and writer known for heirloom seed advocacy and garden-based cooking using home-grown herbs. Better Homes and Gardens called her "a groundbreaking gardener",[1] and Businessweek a "pioneering innovator" who helped popularize specialty vegetables and cottage garden flowers for home gardening and gourmet restaurants.[2]
Seed companies
editShepherd earned a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the early 1980s. While teaching environmental studies, she met a Dutch seed dealer who encouraged her interest in seed varieties. She began her own seed distribution company in 1983.[3] Shepherd's Garden Seeds was a small mail-order seed company specializing in uncommon vegetable and flower seeds. In 1988, the business was purchased by White Flower Farm, a larger mail-order nursery in Litchfield, Connecticut, which eventually closed it.[4] Anne Raver, a gardening writer for The New York Times, cited the sale as an example of "an increasingly familiar story … : a small specialty nursery known for unique plants is bought by a larger company hoping to take advantage of its cutting-edge appeal and to get new plants for mass marketing. What ensues is invariably a loss of diversity … and, often, a loss of the vision that made the nursery attractive to begin with." In 1997, Shepherd went on to start a new business, Renee's Garden Seeds,[5] based in Felton, California.[6] In 2006, Renee's Garden Seeds were sold at 900 retail outlets in the United States, with 250 varieties of flowers, vegetables and herbs.[7] In 2011, 2.5 million seed packets representing more than 400 varieties were sold online and at 1,500 garden centers in the United States and Canada.[8]
Publications and other work
editShepherd is known for writing her own plant descriptions and growing information for her catalogues and seed packets.[9] She has published two cookbooks (Recipes from a Kitchen Garden and More Recipes from a Kitchen Garden), as well as numerous articles in food, gardening, and lifestyle periodicals. She maintains a gardening blog, and lectures at gardening shows and conferences.[10] She and her seeds are mentioned in the novel See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid.[11]
Shepherd has served on the advisory board of the National Gardening Association. Her charitable work includes donating seed for community, prison, and school gardens in the United States, Honduras, Nigeria, and Uganda, and a fundraising program through Renee's Garden for schools and nonprofit organizations.[12]
Trials and gardening philosophy
editShepherd lives on a four-acre site in the San Lorenzo Valley, north of Santa Cruz, where she cultivates trial gardens.[13] She has had additional trial gardens in California, Seattle, Vermont, and Florida.[14] In 2007, she was reported as testing 250 to 300 seed varieties each year, and has collected varieties from around North and South America, Europe, Asia and New Zealand.[15] Her company is a signatory to the "Safe Seed Pledge" of the Council for Responsible Genetics, and her selections are mainly open-pollinated, heirloom, and "garden-worthy" hybrids.[16]
References
edit- ^ Karen Weir-Jimerson and Jane McKeon, "The Herb Hunter," Better Homes and Gardens (August 2012), p. 90.
- ^ "Executive Profile: Renee Shepherd", Bloomberg Businessweek
- ^ Hazel White, "A Gardening Life: Seedswoman Renee Shepherd," Horticulture (August–September 2007), p. 60; Jim Long, "The Generous Gardener: Renee's Garden Spreads the Word of Gardening and Good Seed," Heirloom Gardening (Winter 2012–13), p. 80.
- ^ Anne Raver, "Resistance May Be Futile: The Catalogs Are Here," The New York Times (January 16, 2000)[1]; Journey to New England: A Traveller's Guide (Globe Pequot Press, 1999), p. 353.
- ^ Anne Raver, "Abruptly, an End Comes for a Garden Shangri-La" The New York Times (June 8, 2006)[2]; Janet Fletcher, "Garden Entrepreneur Renee Shepherd Cultivates Another Seed Firm," San Francisco Chronicle (March 4, 1998)[3]
- ^ Anne Raver, "Summer's Plump Little Success Story," The New York Times (June 22, 2006)[4]
- ^ Ann Kaiser, "Editor in the Country: Ann's on 'Jury Duty'," Country Woman Magazine (January–February 2006), p. 6.
- ^ Justine DaCosta, "For 25 Years, the Woman Behind Renee's Garden Has Cultivated the Notion That Growing Plants from Seed Is Easier than You Might Think," Santa Cruz Sentinel (March 26, 2011)[5]
- ^ White, "A Gardening Life," p. 60; Long, "The Generous Gardener," p. 81; Fletcher, "Garden Entrepreneur Renee Shepherd".
- ^ "Renee Shepherd" biography and blog
- ^ Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)
- ^ White, "A Gardening Life," p. 60; Long, "The Generous Gardener," p. 81.
- ^ White, "A Gardening Life," p. 60.
- ^ Long, "The Generous Gardener," p. 81; DaCosta, "For 25 Years, the Woman Behind Renee's Garden".
- ^ White, "A Gardening Life," p. 60; Long, "The Generous Gardener," p. 82.
- ^ Long, "The Generous Gardener," p. 82.