30 / SEEDWORLD.COM FEBRUARY 2018 ONE COULD SAY that gardening is in Judy Seaborn’s blood — literally. Not only were her mother and grandmother avid gardeners, the city Seaborn grew up in — Los Gatos, California — was named by Sunset magazine as one of the top three best places in the world for gardening. “The house I grew up in had a lathe house in the backyard where I ‘played’ for hours on end,” Seaborn recalls. “My grand- mother taught me how to take cuttings of daisies and gera- niums, and I was hooked from there on. One way my parents encouraged me to read was by purchasing a magazine subscrip- tion to Organic Gardener.” After graduating from Chico State University, with a degree in communications and taking a job in that field, she realized that this was not where her heart was. “So, I went back to what I loved — gardening,” she says. “I got a job in Chico at Box Brothers Garden Center as a water girl, quickly became one of their best sales people, and then later managed a garden center in Saratoga. I became a road rep for El Modeno, where I serviced garden centers in the Bay Area.” When Seaborn moved to Colorado in 1989, and was inter- viewing at garden centers, she noticed how many products she had seen in the Bay Area that were missing from Colorado garden centers. And since she had been a successful road rep, she decided to take the leap and venture out on her own by starting Earthworkers Emporium, a garden center sales rep company. “I represented over 60 lines of garden gift type products and 14 publishers to garden centers along the front range,” she recalls. “I offered products that were not found at Home Depot — products that helped garden centers differentiate them- selves from the hardware store. However, I sold Earthworkers Emporium after I had my first baby, Catherine.” She later had a second daughter, Sophia. In 1995, her entrepreneurial spirit rose again and she and her husband, Curtis Jones, started Botanical Interests in Broomfield, Colorado, out of their garage, and sold seed packet lines to inde- pendent garden centers. With a lifetime love of gardening, this Colorado transplant and co-owner of a company that offers both organic and conventionally produced seed, is living the life she has always envisioned. Lisa Kopochinski lisakop@sbcglobal.net Meet Judy Seaborn of Botanical Interests: Her Labor of Love Judy Seaborn in the warehouse of Botanical Interests, the seed company she owns with her husband in Broomfield, Colorado.