Pine Knot Farms has been helping customers find plants for their shady gardens since 1983 when Dick Tyler and Judith Knott Tyler opened the nursery near Clarksville Va. as a wholesale source of perennials in the Southern Atlantic States. We began working on a hellebore breeding program since the early 1990's. We have been the UK over 20 times to select stock from the best specialist nurseries. We have also traveled to Europe and the Balkans for stock and have traded with growers from Japan, Australia and New Zealand as well as with the best breeders in the US. We feel this partnership has allowed us to not only make some good friends, but also to gather some of the best stock plants in the world. As our customer, we can provide you with the healthiest, vigorous, and most beautiful plants.
We are a family owned nursery nestled in the forest on a former tobacco farm that has been in Judith's family for six generations with Josh and Ruth, our grandchildren, making the seventh. We have a large garden that we all enjoy, both as a testing area for plants we sell at the nursery, but also for the simple pleasure of watching things grow. We share our home and our lives with our much loved cats and dogs. We are very fortunate to have our family nearby. Our daughter Helen and her husband Greg (parents of Joshua Tyler Kraus and Ruth Tyler Kraus) and our son Richard and his husband Jamie come to the farm for holidays and to help us on our special Hellebore Days.
We have been very fortunate over the years to have been given several "legs up" in our efforts. Contact with the J.C. Raulston Arboretum taught us more about plants than we knew was possible.They have some great photos of our gardens on their website. We were privileged to enjoy the tutelage of Elizabeth Stangman of the sadly closed Washfield Nursery who taught us or first lessons in hellebore breeding and kindly encouraged us over the years. Our partnership with Ashwood Nurseries in the UK Ashwood Nurseries enabled us to add some high caliber hellebores to our stock. Will McLewin of Phedar Nursery led us on a trip to the Balkans Phedar that opened our eyes to the beauty and variety of the species hellebores.
We have had some very good publicity, including a couple of segments on The Martha Stewart Living Show that can still be viewed on Ms Stewart's site. Click here to see the video.
Also, Adrian Higgans did a very nice article in the Washington Post Adrian Higgins Washington Post