Mail-Order Explorer

Garden Perennials
by Christina M. Scott

A business doesn’t always need a fancy name and a large selection of trendy plants to be successful. Sometimes all it takes is a commitment to growing high-quality plants and providing an equally high level of customer service. Such is the story of Garden Perennials, a nursery in Wayne, Nebraska.

When Gail Korn opened the nursery in northeastern Nebraska 17 years ago, she had no idea that it would grow into a booming mail-order business. “Perennials were not as popular then as they are now,” she explains. “I just thought I could be a local source for ready-to-bloom perennials.” A former English teacher, Korn has no formal training in horticulture, just a knack for design and an eye for what goes on in her garden. “I pay attention to what I see,” she says. “I let the plants teach me.”

Practical Philosophy

In her catalog, Korn writes, “We don’t grow plants to live indoors.” Garden Perennials’ policy of not coddling plants generally makes for easier transplanting. All plants are grown outdoors and stay in the field year round. “I grow whatever is pretty and does well,” Korn says. “The plants must be able to take whatever Nebraska weather dishes out.” That includes drought and bitter cold.

Korn’s customers laud her real-world plant knowledge. “Gail really knows her stuff,” says Celeste Anderson, who tends her half-acre garden in Washoe Valley, Nevada. Because of her high-desert location, Anderson appreciates the fact that all of the nursery’s plants are well acclimated to winter cold.

Most of Korn’s customers garden in the northern states, but many southern gardeners find that plants from Garden Perennials also do well for them. Ann Pasley of Thomaston, Georgia, has been buying from the nursery for three years and says her purchases have flourished in her garden; she adds, “They are all very generous in size.”

Daylily Mania

Though she grows several hundred different perennials, Korn’s specialty is the daylily (Hemerocallis spp.)—she currently grows 840 varieties on her three-acre nursery, which has been designated an official daylily display garden by the American Hemerocallis Society. Half of her 50-page 1999 catalog is devoted to daylilies. Korn estimates that 40 percent of her sales are for daylilies.

Besides catering to confirmed daylily lovers, Garden Perennials has also made new ones. Mary Keast of Oakland, Iowa, first bought mail-order daylilies from the nursery five years ago for a volunteer town project and purchased one plant for herself. Later that spring she had a chance to visit the nursery. “It was amazing,” Keast says of her first view of the nursery’s flower fields. “The color on the hill was just breathtaking.” From that point on, Keast was hooked. Her garden now contains 260 daylily varieties; it was also recently named an American Hemerocallis Society display garden.

When Korn isn’t tending daylilies in the garden, she can often be found tending them in cyberspace. Many of Korn’s customers discover Garden Perennials through the American Hemerocallis Society’s chat room on the Internet, where Korn offers information on daylilies. “Gail is not just a grower—she’s a gardener,” says Karen Burgoyne, a landscape consultant in Denison, Texas, who grows over 900 daylily cultivars in her garden. “And she’s very willing to share her knowledge.” Burgoyne admits to going online often for Korn’s tips on suitable plants to grow with her daylilies.

A perennial that Korn likes as a backdrop for daylilies is Veronicastrum virginicum, which grows to four feet tall and produces spikes of ivory blooms in midsummer. She also likes Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’, which bears burgundy foliage that matures to green.

Asked to name her favorite daylily, Korn demurs—she likes them all. “I suppose if I were really smart, I’d think of some really hard-to-find specialty plant that I could say, ‘Hey, you’ll only get it here’, but that’s just not me,” she says. “My goal is to grow plants that will look good in my garden.” 

Christina M. Scott is former assistant editor of The American Gardener. Mary Yee, managing editor, contributed to this article.

To get a catalog, send $1 to Garden Perennials, Route 1, Wayne, NE 68787. Tours of the nursery can be arranged with a week’s notice. Call (402) 375-3615 or e-mail gkorn@bloomnet.com  for more information.