Valentine's Day is approaching and we thought it would be fitting for members of our staff to share how they fell in love with plants. Please enjoy their stories.

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Like many others, my fascination with plants began in a vegetable garden.

I grew up just outside of Green Bay, one of six kids. My father was a welder in a paper mill and my mother a nurse. There was no way that Mom and Dad could have fed all those hungry mouths without their half acre garden-planned every winter in pencil on butcher paper rolled out on the kitchen table.

The bounty of that garden still captivates me. The wonder I felt as a boy at how the fence sagged beneath cucumber vines only 60 days after I had pressed three small white seeds into a mound of soil has never left me. I can smell that earth. I can feel the earthworms and hear the bees. I know the heft of ripe cantaloupe. I can taste the sweetness of freshly dug carrots-gritty with soil that didn't wipe off-and the tart juice of the immature green fruits I snuck from the apple tree which grew just behind the compost pile.

That garden is gone now, as are my parents, but I remember.

These days, I watch as my own children push three small white seeds in a mound of soil each Memorial Day and label the resulting pickle jars with their names. I kneel as they crowd around, blackened to the elbows with darkened knees, and wait for me to solemnly judge who has, in fact, found the biggest worm living in the compost pile. I grin as they stalk cabbage moths with raspberry stained faces or gather roly-poly sow bugs in opaque buckets. Each spring I photograph them beneath their own personal cherry trees.

A lifelong love of gardening was my father's legacy, my inheritance; a family heirloom. Now it is theirs.

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One of my earliest memories of plants is around the age of nine, when my family weeded rows of corn to consume and sell. The sun was hot on my young back. I stopped working in the fields when school started.

When I started working at Johnson's Nursery, I just thought that it would be another way to make a living. Now I don't just work with plants, I know them, and it has opened up excellent opportunities for me.

From small seeds to tall trees, plants are just like people. They both need food and water to grow strong and beautiful. When they don't get these things, they grow weak and wilt. I enjoy seeing how plants grow, knowing how much water each plant requires, what type needs to be in the shade or sun, their mature sizes, and how much space each plant needs to have when first planted.  I get to see them first when they come off the trucks into our nursery.

Plants are beautiful and each is unique (I enjoy them the most in summer and fall, with gorgeous flowers and colorful leaves). Plants provide us with the air we need. How can we continue to live if we don't have plants? They are powerful workhorses that clean our air and brighten our environment.  I will continue working with them and learning more as long as I can.

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Why do I love plants?

In my earliest memories I'm in my grandmother's garden. I'm learning my fruits and vegetables, I'm weeding and waiting. I'm introduced.

Later I'm in the forests with my father and grandfathers. I'm hunting and fishing. I learn about the flora and fauna in historical and ancient systems that I depend on. I'm interested.

Understanding that the ecosystem is alive and moving across landscapes. Plants have their own explorers and travelers, and their homebodies too. They can't move like us, but they get around in their complex cycles of dissemination, germination and succession. It's life and death out there. Plants have their own cliques, associations of soil, water, fire, light and time. I'm amazed.

Trees tell stories and lie somewhere between silent witnesses and historical landmarks. They are something passed down, like an heirloom lasting perhaps hundreds of years, and are my greatest passion. Growing them from little seed to landscape sentinel makes my spirit soar. It's lovely.

Being a propagator allows me to tell these stories, relive these memories, share what I know and pass to you a piece of world history all in a living, breathing organism. I've always been in love.

Plus, I love green.

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Horticulturist/Contractor Sales

How did a boy from Iowa who grew up in the city, but spent most summers working on my grandfather's farm, become interested in plants, surrounded by corn, soybeans, pigs, and cattle? There certainly was very little in terms of forests or natural areas to enjoy on a regular basis like in Wisconsin. Those hot summers working on the farm helping my grandparents and parents created a love of gardening, hunting, fishing, and of just being outdoors, even in the flat open plains of Iowa.