Growing for the Good of It
28 Mar 2012
Yatahai Gardens grows everything it sells from seed—a distinction few greenhouses can claim.
By Lisa Marshall Photos by Thad Johnson It’s a frigid December day, with 6 inches of snow on the ground and a chill wind ripping across Boulder County’s eastern plains. But inside a humid 74-degree greenhouse at Yatahai Gardens, Thad Johnson has already begun to coax tiny bits of spring from their slumber.
- Thad and Ashley Johnson
- In addition to awesome flower baskets, Yatahai offers gorgeous sunsets as well.
- Yatahai’s bloom-filled flower baskets usually sell out by Mother’s Day, so get there early in the season if you want one.
Farming & Falling in Love
“You walk in and it’s just phenomenal,” says longtime customer Kristen Johnson. “It isn’t like going into a big-box store where there is really nothing special about it and everyone else is getting the same thing you are. It’s more like a treasure hunt.” Raised in South Dakota—a state where small farmers were hit hard in the ’70s by the proliferation of modern commercial farms elsewhere—Johnson, 41, never envisioned himself making a living off the land. But while attending the University of Colorado, he took a summer job pulling weeds and picking lettuce at a local organic farm for $6 an hour. He “fell in love” fast, and in 1995 dropped out of school to start his own farm—a move his parents, at first, were not keen on. “When I said, ‘I want to drop out of school and become a farmer,’ what they heard, being from South Dakota was, ‘I want to drop out of school and not have a job,’” he says.
- Each plant inside Yatahai’s greenhouses is grown from seed—a considerable task with impressive results.
A self-described “begonia nerd,” he has also spent years toying with light timers and temperature gauges in order to create a climate suitable for growing plants that typically flourish in more tropical climes. Today, he offers 31 different varieties of begonias, along with nine kinds of dianthus, 11 types of impatiens, 10 varieties of marigolds and 32 petunia breeds.
He also creates roughly 4,000 hanging baskets per season, growing the plants together in the basket from tiny starts, carefully choosing each one for color, size and texture. “I’m kind of like a jazz musician. I know the mood I want to set with the plants, and I just have fun with it.”
After six months of prep, Johnson typically sells 70 percent of his plants in the 10 days before and after Mother’s Day. Then, after a quieter time of selling mums in fall and Christmas trees in early December, he starts the process over again—one seed at a time.
- Yatahai Gardens isn’t visible from the street, so look for the sign on Nelson Road.
