While it is sad to see nurseries close or change, I believe what we really
morn us the loss of cultivars and species to the trade. People and
nurseries have a life span. They can act as guardians of our plant
diversity by disseminating it. But sadly this never lasts forever. The
hope is that the plant wealth has been distributed such that it can be
recovered by younger people and new nurseries.

My belief is that this can only happen with education. For someone to want
to save something they must know about it. Plant Societies play an
important role here as well as botanical gardens. Sadly it never seems to
be adequate and much is continually being lost. I have spent the last 30
years trying to encourage this information for the Genus Iris. I realize
that in many ways I have failed and many species and cultivars of species
have disappeared from the trade. I have no idea if my efforts have had any
effect whatsoever. Yet I keep trying.

PBS has performed a great service in this regard with its wiki. Inspired
by this I convinced the Iris Society to create a wiki also, called the
Iris Encyclopedia. It has taken a couple years just to find the computer
techs who could set it up, and in then in the last 7 months I have
enlisted 150 workers who added 20,000 pages and 19,000 images. On August
5th the infant wiki appeared on the American Iris Society website. The new
baby is far from complete. There are possibly 80,000 pages needed and
perhaps a million images. I understand that there is a mindset against
hybrids, but this encyclopedia attempts to be a complete reference,
including all species and their variations along with the hybrids that
came from them. We hope to cover the genus Iris as thoroughly as possible.
There are many pages that are still crude and lacking pictures, but you
are invited to visit. It will only become a really comprehensive reference
if we can enlist the aid of hundreds of more individuals
. Adding pictures is very easy. Come visit and let me know what you think.

Bob Pries, wiki manager and Public Relations chair for AIS

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ellen Hornig" <hornig@earthlink.net>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 10:23:26 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [pbs] MBAs and Small Specialty Nurseries -addendum

In my last message, I think I stated my income rather confusingly (so
someone might have thought: wow! She made that much! In that case, I'm
going to start a nursery now!) What I meant was that after I quit
academics
and devoted myself full-time to the nursery, I made under 10K in my first
year, and the net crept upward over the next 12 years to around 72K last
year.

Like Robin, I happen to own and live on the land where the nurery is,
water
is cheap here, and (don't know Robin's situation here) my husband's job
gives us health insurance. If I had to pay for the land and the
insurance,
I'd be netting a whole lot less.

Ellen

Ellen Hornig
Seneca Hill Perennials
3712 County Route 57
Oswego NY 13126 USA
http://www.senecahillperennials.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ellen Hornig" <hornig@earthlink.net>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: [pbs] MBAs and Small Specialty Nurseries

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