Gardening without a Walker

The horticultural world just lost another stalwart with the passing of plantswoman, Sally Walker, 87, of Southwestern Native Seed. After departing her native England, by way of New Zealand, and later California, Sally and her husband Tim, settled in Arizona in the 1960s. After working for several renown nurseries in both the UK and US, she started her own seed company, based out of Tucson in 1975, which would become Southwestern Native Seed.

Over the next 32 years, Sally was one of the only sources of many southwestern native plants, introducing several great new plants to commerce including Agastache rupestris, Penstemon cardinalis, and Aquilegia desertorum. Her relentless travel schedule took her throughout the Southwestern US and into the mountains of Northern Mexico first to find and study the plants and then return a second time for seed.

I would always drop what I was doing when Sally’s catalog, filled with her own plant sketches, arrived.

We were fortunate to have Sally visit JLBG several times, and below is an image from her 2009 trip.

Sally Walker

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