08/29/2026
HoneyFest Marketkeeper Tales
NativeEarthSeed / The Woman Who Planted for Life:
There was a woman named Denise who looked at a patch of land and saw more than flowers.
She saw what was missing.
The bees.
The butterflies.
The birds that depended on plants most people walked past without a second glance.
So in 1994, Denise Ciastko did something unusual. She opened Connecticut’s first nursery devoted entirely to native plants.
Back then, native gardening was hardly fashionable.
But Denise wasn’t chasing fashion.
She was restoring beach grass at Lynde Point in Old Saybrook. Building rain gardens. Planting wildflowers where water and wildlife could find their way back.
And something happened.
The plants did more than grow.
They worked.
They fed.
They sheltered.
They brought life with them.
Years passed. Awards followed. But Denise kept returning to the same simple idea:
Plant what belongs there, and nature knows what to do next.
Eventually, that idea followed her north to Vermont.
Today, through NativearthSeed, Denise sends native wildflower seeds out in small packets destined for meadows, woodland edges, rain gardens, and backyard corners.
Tiny things, seeds.
Easy to overlook.
But inside each one is a future flower.
And somewhere beyond that flower, perhaps a bee.
And that is why Denise calls her work—
“A Way to Plant for Life.”
