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About the Rock Star AwardOur Rock Star award honors Emerald Coast Growers employees who demonstrate a sustained high level of performance and inspire others.This month’s honors go to Alexis Thomas, who joined the ECG team 2016.In her five years with the firm, Lexi has tackled many jobs around the greenhouses. She is experienced in plant production, picking, plant care and logistics. Currently, she’s helping out in our very busy shipping department, while still assisting with grass production.Her

About the Rock Star AwardOur Rock Star award honors ECG employees who demonstrate a sustained high level of performance and inspire others.This month, we stop the music to recognize Theresa “Teddy” Davis, a team leader specializing in perennial cuttings. Theresa Davis joined Emerald Coast Growers in 1997. For two decades and more, she’s earned the respect and admiration of her peers. Here’s what they had to say when they nominated her as our latest Rock Star.“I’d like to nominate Theresa “T

About the Rock Star AwardOur Rock Star award honors ECG employees who demonstrate a sustained high level of performance and inspire others.This month’s award goes to assistant grower Luis Villarreal.If there’s a common thread connecting our Rock Star winners, it’s this: They all have a “Can do” attitude, and a “Whatever it takes” work ethic. Luis is no exception.Our April champion scored a first: He was praised by a peer for worn-out teeth -- not in his smile but on the equipment he works to its

Echinacea purpurea and hybridsOf all the native plants that have gone from America’s prairies to the world’s gardens, few have a history to rival that of the purple coneflower.For many years gardeners had two choices: Pinky-purple, and Not-quite-white. Then came 2002, when breeder Jim Ault of Chicago introduced the first orange and yellow hybrids. That was the genus’s Big Bang, and like the universe, it’s still expanding.Now, you can have your “purple” coneflowers in myriad hues, solids and bi c

Geography Lessons in the GardenA good mixed perennial garden can be a trip around the world – or at least across a continent or two. Today’s tour involves a plant whose name sounds deceptively like a land it did NOT come from. Nepeta kubanica Neptune (‘Bokratune’ PP29556)Is that a funky way to spell Cuba, land of cigars and Castro? Nyet! The specific epithet refers to “big-leaf catmint’s” ancestral home on the Kuban Peninsula in Southern Russia, on the Black Sea. This particular beauty was bred