Have you ever wondered how the seeds we take so for granted every year for our annual cutting and veggie gardens get in those cute little packs illustrated with the beautiful color drawings? The Denver 2019 Garden Bloggers Fling organizing committee was lucky enough to have Judy Seaborn, co-owner of Botanical Interests, at its helm and some of her staff in its ranks. Her prominence in the Denver gardening community opened a lot of great garden gates for us–and she gave us the opportunity to see the operation of her company’s 300,000 square foot production warehouse in Broomfield.

Judy Seaborn and partner Curtis Jones founded the 24 year old business in their garage, with a goal of providing gardeners more information on their seed packets. They now offer over 600 seed varieties which are sold in independent garden centers and through their mail order business. On their site http://www.botanicalinterests.com you will not only find the seeds of your dreams and selected garden products but also their blog and a variety of short educational articles. “I like to say that we are a gardening education company that just happens to sell seeds,” Curtis says in the About Us page on their site. You can also subscribe to their newsletter–there can never be too much gardening news in my inbox!

A seed’s journey begins in the receiving area where huge bags full arrive from selected growers. Judy explains that every bag is “sampled” for germination rate. This involves inserting a sort of coring tube through the bag (specially designed to allow this) and sending the sample to her laboratory for germination testing. No bag of seed moves into the production process until Judy is satisfied that the germination rate meets her high standard.

Judy almost glowed as she introduced us to her baby–this machine counts the seeds into the individual packets AND has a special mechanism inserting the tiniest seeds (like tomatoes) into a second internal sealed packet called a sachet.

We’re learning the order filling process which uses this customized cart to increase efficiency of steps up and down the long rows of seed packets ready to be shipped.

Each of hundreds of boxes contains a single type of seed and any given order may be for many different seed types. One of Judy’s 50 or so in-house staff will work each order on the “pick line” and once complete, the order will move to the packaging area.

The upstairs of the warehouse is home to the support staff which includes marketing and IT professionals. The seed packet art is all created by Colorado artists–here you see a proof sheet to be scrutinized for color and other detail.

Botanical Interests also has 60 field based sales representatives across the nation–sounds like a great job for me! The  upstairs hallways are lined with photos sent in by customers of plants grown from Judy & Curtis’s seeds. Recently Judy introduced an indoor seed starting set up to look at new varieties.

We can’t get away without a quick look–and sniff–at the “vault” where the most dear of the seeds are stored. Judy shared a story of a package delivery she was called out to sign for once, even though it was quite small the pounds of tiny seeds it held were valued at over $10,000. The vault also offers cold storage for seeds with relatively short germination lives.

On the run again–last call for the bus to our next stop!