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Dubbed the "Queen of Containers" by Tovah Martin in Horticulture Magazine
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In Memory of Kathryn Pufahl
1958-2003
Memories live on and help us hold on to those we love.
Kathy was an extraordinary person who has
touched all of our lives in many ways.
Kathryn Pufahl, founder of Beds & Borders, Inc, and a leader in the green
industry, lost her battle with cancer and died October 13, 2003.
Kathryn received national recognition for her container designs but one of
the things we admired most about Kathy was the vision she brought to
building Beds & Borders. She was a tireless promoter of gardening with
unusual plants in creative ways. Kathy was always focused on how to use
well known, unusual, and new plant varieties in the garden, and then
educating and sharing those ideas.
Kathy was a pioneer in the horticultural industry because she wasn’t afraid
to do something different. She wasn’t worried so much about shelf life and
shipping ability. She wanted to know how well the plants would do in the
garden. She found plants that either were too hard or too tall or just two
weird for most growers to cultivate. She used old plants in new ways as
well - like Ipomoea or Coleus.
Kathy worked her way through this vast and
untapped wellspring of annuals and tender perennials that had been flying
below the radar of all but the most ambitious plants people. She ordered
seeds from around the world and sorted through thousands of plants to find
the plants that would work in containers and in beds and borders. She liked
plants with a sense of life, plants that had a little bit of a wild nature.
Kathy must have identified with those plants as somehow as being like
herself. All the elements that no one cared about or even considered,
became the foundation to Beds & Borders' success.
Anyone who met Kathy knew she was true and real. She knew what she was doing.
She wanted to change the world. She was successful. And her success wasn’t
just in creating beautiful containers, or finding and popularizing great
plants, though she certainly did all that and more. Neither was it in
developing a business model that inspired others to follow in her footsteps. Her greatest success has been an awakening in us all to that sense of passion and wonder in each plant, that brought us into the garden in the first place.
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Beds & Borders, Inc., Laurel Lane, Laurel, New York 11948, (631) 298-1836, Fax (631) 298-1834, contact@bedsandborders.com
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