Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patty Ward. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Patty thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
The taste of fresh garden food! Really, there’s nothing better than a garden tomato or watermelon. My husband and I both grew up gardening and we both love eating from the garden.
As a child, my family planted a vegetable and flower garden each year. I worked in the garden with my mom. We pulled weeds, picked off unwanted pests, and harvested food from the garden. And then when visiting my grandparents, I spent hours picking and eating fresh raspberries. They had over an acre of raspberries on their property and it was pure heaven! I could taste the difference and knew I always wanted to have a garden.
My husband loves tomatoes and fresh garden food as well. We’ve had a garden together since the first year we got married.
Many years later had been dabbling in the e-Commerce space for about a year and selling hardware type products. One day it dawned on us, that we should sell seeds. I knew at that moment that it was the perfect fit for us. Seeds are something we are passionate about and it was an easy decision and we haven’t looked back. We started small and offered 24 varieties of herb and flower seeds. Then as we were able we slowly added more varieties and equipment and grew our business.
We were offering a solution to what people wanted. Garden seeds were not popular yet in the e-Commerce space, and we helped people find seed online. We also started offering free content on tips and tricks to growing a garden through our blog and social media. Our main goal was to offer high quality heirloom seeds and help people be successful in the garden.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We are a eCommerce garden seed company. We offer over 450 varieties of heirloom garden seed for the back yard gardener such as herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Our seeds plus growing tips are available on our website, Amazon, and Walmart.com.
We only offer the highest quality heirloom seeds. We germination test all our seed.
We grow extensive gardens to test seed and also create inspiring and informational content to help others be successful in the garden.On our property we have a flower farm, a terrace garden, a large vegetable garden, kitchen herb garden, and a hoop house for tomatoes and peppers. The main garden is about 75 feet by 90 feet. The other gardens are various sizes.
We are creating hundreds of videos on different varieties and growing tips to help our customers with the information they need. I think our growing library of content and our fresh heirloom seeds set us a part from other seed companies.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
It would be hard to pick just one hurdle. There are opportunities to be solved ongoing, and I like to think of them as opportunities. We grow when we problem- solve and find solutions. One thing that we have worked on for several years that has taken a while to figure out is a watering system to water the gardens. Where we live the summer can get hot and you have to water when there is no rain. Without a good watering system, our gardens wouldn’t survive. But getting this to run smoothly has been an opportunity to solve.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The first couple years of running a business were very busy and challenging. We were wearing all the hats ourselves and couldn’t afford to hire help so we did everything ourselves from growing a garden, graphic design, accounting, taxes, and running a website. It was a lot and it did take a lot of self-discipline and perseverance.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sowrightseeds.com
- Instagram: @sowrightseeds
- Facebook: sowrightseeds
- Youtube: @sowrightseeds
Image Credits
Jeff Nicholson
Lee’s Summit, MO