Ball Seed Garden Tour

A couple of weeks ago the folks over at Zapwater invited me out for an awesome day exploring and learning about Ball Seed Gardens.

Before going I honestly hadn't really connected the dots on who Ball Seed was and what they were all about, luckily they explained it all to us once we were there.

Ball Seed has been around since 1876 and has turned into a major player in the seed and horticulture world. Their main business is developing new plants (from flowers to produce) ultimately to solve the problems of the consumer or end user (someone who wants pretty flowers in their garden or to eat a yummy tomato at a restaurant) but the process is obviously very complex and lengthy to get there.

We got to tour the gardens, which are maintained all throughout the summer and then come fall the vegetation is cleaned up and turned into compost soil for next years batch. It was really neat to learn about everything from the decline of pollinators like bees, to the rise in popularity of trends like a Jungalow (a bungalow meets jungle, a room full of plants). We got to taste foods made from their produce and even take home our own little collection of potted plants.

All in all, it was a really cool day and got me inspired to maybe start keeping some plants of my own, who else out there has a green thumb or wants to work on that?