HANS HANSEN

The hybridizer

- SCOTT BEUERLEIN

A LIFELONG PLANT LOVER, Hans Hansen followed his passion to a career in plant breeding. He currently serves as Director of New Plant Development at Michigan's Walters Gardens, Inc., a leading wholesale perennial grower. Through both hybridizing and field work, Hans has introduced hundreds of perennials to the gardening market.

SCOTT BEUERLEIN: You were into plants even as a child. Tell us about that and your education.

HANS HANSEN: I remember always being interested in plants. My earliest memories include planting onions with my mom and dad at age three. I grew up on a dairy farm in southwestern Minnesota. Although I didn't know it at the time, my parents were my greatest source of encouragement. I'm sure they were very busy with raising three kids and running both a dairy farm as well as raising crops, but they allowed me to have space to raise ornamental plants. They also built a temporary greenhouse for me, rigged up fluorescent shop lights to germinate seeds, drove me to nurseries and master gardener events and rearranged family vacations to include arboretum stops.

My mom loved to share cut flowers with friends, church and folks in the hospital and nursing homes. She placed value on plants that made good cut flowers rather than were good landscape plants. She enjoyed plants, but her interest was strictly on the beauty and she didn't care about the names. In fact, after college when I bought my house in Waseca and finished taking divisions of the plants on the farm, she pulled all the labels and discarded them.

My dad didn't care for yellow leaved plants; he thought they looked chlorotic and needed more nitrogen. He seemed in tune with my work though, and when I asked what he thought of some of my gold-leaf hosta hybrids he said, "I suppose they are special."