Dear Friends,

As we enter our seventeenth year in the commercial market, we would like to thank you for your patronage. We haven't done much with the business during the last two years due to health problems, but it now appears that I will be ok and we are back in business as before. Our greenhouse is filled with thousands of violets and other gesneriads that need a new home.

Our hybrids have now been named and can be found in the appropriate section of our catalog under Streptocarpus, Smithiantha, Eucodonia, and Intergeneric. The names of all of our hybrids will begin with "Pats Pet". We hope that you will decide to try some of them.

Four years ago, we added another feature to our catalog. In addition to including the AVSA registration date and number when it is available, we have also gone back through the supps that we had and have included the date when a variety first appeared in one of the supps. Most clubs should accept this as sufficient documentation for allowing a variety to be entered in the "early releases" category in a show. We did not quite find them all, but we should have most of the rest of them for next year's catalog.

Our goal is for every customer to be so pleased with the quality and price of our merchandise that they will spread the good word for us. Please let us know if ever this is not the case. Sometimes things do go wrong, but when they do, please give us an opportunity to make them right. We will try to include free merchandise with every order, selected from your sub list if possible. Therefore, please give us a good list of subs. We try not to use subs, but sometimes it is unavoidable. In the absence of a sub list, we will pick some nice subs for you if it is necessary to do so. If "no subs" is specified, and we are out of any items, we will issue a credit slip for any amount up to $10. If the refund amount is over $10, we will send a refund check.

We decided to take our plant descriptions for the violets directly from the MVL (African violet master variety list) whenever possible. When reading the descriptions, the (/) means "with" and the (-) means "to". A detailed guide to understanding the descriptions may be found in the MVL. Descriptions for releases not in the MVL are obtained from the hybridizer, or are written by us. They are in italics. All of the sections in our catalog, including shipping & supplies, pricing, and our order form can be accessed from the links on the index page.

Visitors are welcome at our greenhouse. Please contact us to make arrangements for your visit. Plants and supplies are for sale at the greenhouse.

This is our eleventh year to have a catalog on the Internet with color pictures, and it has proven to be a tremendous job. As you will see, it is not quite complete. As time permits, I will get the rest of the pictures of the African violets and "other gesneriads" ready.

Due to the fact that there are only the two of us involved in our business, and we are very busy trying to keep up, we must insist on the following: Our business is mail order only. We do not take telephone or e-mail orders. We are not set up for credit cards, and we do not do any other kind of credit business. Full payment must accompany your order, sent to us by regular mail. We fill orders in the sequence that we receive them. Sometimes a variety is in short supply due to being featured in one of the magazines or because it was a show winner, etc. Therefore, we do not reserve plants, as this is unfair to another customer who may have ordered the same variety before you. By doing business this way, we can keep our prices down, and we can spend our time filling orders instead of doing paperwork. Unfortunately, commercial vendors that offer a wide variety of plants are very much a vanishing breed and we feel that it is very important to the Gesneriad Society and AVSA for some of us to remain in business so that growers will have easy access to these wonderful plants. We plan to do this as long as we are able. We get a great deal of satisfaction out of judging, giving presentations, and our association with all of the wonderful friends that we have made in AVSA and the Gesneriad Society. We also enjoy our participation in the shows.

We had so many orders last year, plus some illness, that we did get behind. We apologize for this, but we are making every effort to keep our prices low and our quality high. If we were to hire some help, we would have to raise our prices considerably, and we don't want to do this. We will not be ready to start shipping until about the first of September, as this is the earliest that we can have all of the new plants separated and ready for shipment. They also need a little time to grow to reasonable size. So, please be patient with us if we are runnin' behind. We sell only non-blooming starter plants in 2 1/4" square pots.

Gary & Pat Dunlap