Andrew Dale
enrolled in the horticulture program at South Seattle Community College in 1977, his focus on greenhouse management and landscaping, including the installation of irrigation systems. He worked at R&R Nursery in Bellevue before being hired away by the venerable Swanson's back in Ballard, the northwest Seattle neighborhood he grew up in. There he was the buyer/outdoor manager for approximately three years starting in 1980, consulting and sales up to 1986.
For two years he operated his own backyard nursery specializing in herbs and scented plants that he grew himself. He also has a great love for daylilies, iris, hostas and all manner of winter interest plants. He is our chief portable water garden architect and will be teaching classes on the subject; he also plans to offer his popular pruning workshops again. He holds lifetime status as a Washington Certified Nurseryman.
Andy has taught various martial arts since 1974, full-time for the last twenty years or so. He seems excited about getting back into horticulture, though it seems pretty tame compared to beating people up!
Jay Williams
got a job as a waterboy at a greenhouse near Walla Walla in 1982. Management soon noticed he had the most legible handwriting on staff; this brought a promotion to sign-making. Poring over seed catalogs and The Sunset Western Garden Book every day, he taught himself botanical Latin in the process and fell into a career - one he's tried to escape more than once, obviously without success. He became a Washington Certified Nurseryman in 1991.
Jay has a particular love for variegated foliage and coleus addicts have come to him for a fix for years. He has taught workshops on bonsai and container gardening and given a presentation on plant propagation to the Snohomish County Master Gardeners. He'll try cuttings of almost anything and his success with air-layering has spawned accusations of witchcraft, though he's never been formally charged.
In 2004 Jay joined the staff of Fremont Gardens, a small, well-loved urban nursery at the site now occupied by Emerald City Gardens. The news came in the spring of '07 that the owner wanted a break from retail and would be closing the nursery in the fall of '07 - but that it was her hope that somehow Jay and Andy could take the lease on the place and do their own thing.
...and that's just what they did.
