| A Testing Ground for Heather |
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March 11, 2002 -- Karla Lortz, owner of Heaths & Heathers Nursery in Tacoma, Washington, holds a "Myretoun Ruby." (SHNS photo by Russ Carmack/The News Tribune)
March 11, 2002 -- Karla Lortz, owner of Heaths & Heathers Nursery in Tacoma, Washington, works in one of her greenhouses, which holds just some of the 15,000 potted plants that she will be taking to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show. (SHNS photo by Russ Carmack/The News Tribune)
March 11, 2002 -- Karla Lortz, owner of Heaths & Heathers Nursery in Tacoma, Washington, holds "Bell's Extra Special," a heath that is one of several varieties she raises that bloom in winter. (SHNS photo by Russ Carmack/The News Tribune)
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By Lisa Kremers
Scripps Howard News Service Karla Lortz won't let her customers set foot in her nursery, even though she sells thousands of plants out of her back yard each year. "We are never open to the public -- don't ask -- we won't relent," Lortz says in the 40-page catalog for Heaths & Heathers, her thriving mail-order business. Lortz lives on a lush two acres of land on Harstine Island, a tree- and brush-covered thicket rising out of Puget Sound west of Key Peninsula in Washington state. (The island is spelled Hartstene on maps, but roads, businesses and clubs all are labeled "Harstine," and the state and federal governments have adopted the islanders' spelling.) Her nursery is at least an hour's drive from Tacoma, Olympia and Bremerton, so she doesn't get many drop-ins anyway. Which is good, because Lortz's yard isn't just a nursery, it's also a testing ground. She knows heathers grow well in most soil, but not clay. She knows when to water and when over watering will drown her plants. She knows that deer usually steer clear of heather, but in lean years they'll mow it down more efficiently than garden shears. Her sloping yard is testament to her six years of experimentation. The 40-page catalog is testament to her success -- she offers, she says, more heaths and heathers than any other nursery in the country. Heaths and heathers are often well-suited even to areas where they are not native, and their relatively trouble-free care makes them appealing. "They're so maintenance-free," Lortz said. "They have no known pests." They need no fertilizer and as they become established should be watered less and less each year. The plants typically grow in spiky mounds, fairly low to the ground, except for a few tree-style heathers that may reach up to six feet. Most have gray-green foliage that often turns red or orange in the sun. Some have pink, yellow, red or white flowers with different bloom times; many bloom in winter. "The colors in the dead of winter are incredible," she said. "They offer color all year, by foliage or by flower." Heaths and heathers are not well known in the area. Heathers are native to Scotland and the rest of Western Europe, and warm-weather varieties flourish in South Africa. Heaths have needles; heathers have scaly foliage. Heaths are genus Erica; heathers are Calluna vulgaris, Lortz said. But the term "heathers" is generally used to encompass both heaths and heathers -- and some other brushy plants as well. Lortz coaches her customers to plant their heathers in as much sun as possible, in well-drained soil, where they'll be viewed from the south side, because that's where their colors show the most brightly. Walking a visitor through her nursery, she steered around the edge to the back, to show off the vivid colors facing the south. Lortz and her husband, Mike Plomski, grew up in the town of Federal Way, on the mainland but didn't like the way the area grew in the 1980s. They discovered Harstine Island one weekend camping with friends, bought property, built a house, and moved there in 1990. Plomski drives two hours each way to Kent every day to work at Boeing. Lortz spent her first years on the island focusing on her children -- Liesl, now 17, and Kellen, now 15. Island life is perfect for them, she said. "Kids can't hide here," she said of the island, which has about 400 year-round residents. The family is involved in clubs at the local grange hall, including a drama group where they all put on plays. In the early 1990s, Lortz started studying business opportunities, and in 1995 she bought the mail-order business of an Elma nursery called Heather Acres. The elderly owners hadn't yet computerized their mail-order business, so "I was able to make it grow a lot," Lortz said. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com)
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