Welcome to Green Cottage Creek!
My name is Elvira, and I am the proprietress of this online store for unusual botanicals.
I bring choice botanicals from a select group of domestic and international farmer and producer partners, that I have cultivated deep relationships with over the years, to you directly.
This is my botanical background:
As long as I can remember I've loved plants, and thanks to my parent's travel based profession, I have been able to study a large variety of plants, in many different ecosystems, while living and traveling extensively in the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe, as well as North and South America.
After training for a classical music career, and temporary administrative positions at the German foreign ministry in Bonn, Germany, and the German mission to the United Nations in New York City, USA, Flora eventually became my professional calling .
I enrolled in the New York Botanical Gardens Educational Program and earned certificates in Ornamental Horticulture, and Flower Garden Design.
There's hardly a better place to study plants in depth than at the New York Botanical Gardens , a 250 acre National Historic Landmark site located in the Bronx, NY, whose verdant landscape supports over one million living plants in extensive collections of tropical, temperate, and desert flora, in over 50 individual gardens, and whose herbarium has amassed more than 7.7 million plant specimens over the course of a century, and is home to one of the world’s most comprehensive plant research and conservation programs.
My newly gained knowledge was put to work in a position as assistant curator in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, NYC, a 6 acre formal garden on the Upper East Side, designed by landscape architect Gilmore David Clarke , build in 1937, and rescued from decay in 1982 by the renowned contemporary public garden designer Lynden B. Miller, and beautifully restored since.
Later I returned back to the New York Botanical Gardens, to propagate alpine and native plants for the T.H. Everett Rockgarden and Native Plant Garden from seeds and cuttings, and to work in the garden grounds.
To further deepen my knowledge of the flora kingdom, I moved to the Mediterranean climate of Northern California, where I operated a specialty plant nursery business, located on the grounds of the Marin-Bolinas Botanical gardens, a privately owned 14 acre succulent collection in the North San Francisco bay area.
A year of studying Therapeutic Herbalism with respected Phytotherapist David Hoffman in Sonoma County, CA, lead to employment at e-commerce herbal products company Mountain Rose Herbs in Oregon. After 10 years of helping the company to grow rapidly, in several departments, I left my position as International Farms Manager, to start botanically themed company Green Cottage Creek, in 2014, located in rural Oregon, in the foothills of the Cascades Mountain Range.
Thank you for stopping by!
Elvira
