Meet the staff of HostasDirect, Inc.

Tom Carlson, "Our Fearless Leader"

HostasDirect, Inc and IDeal™ Garden Marker's entrepreneurial owner, Tom Carlson, is an avid gardener and a hosta lover. He frequently speaks to garden clubs. He is a 13-year member of the American Hosta Society and Minnesota Hosta Society. Tom worked his way through school by provided gardening services starting as a lad in 1967. He has a great deal of experience growing hostas, which includes tissue culture, small pots, and divisions in various soil, light, terrain, and weather conditions. His garden currently contains over 450 varieties of hostas. Tom's garden in Roseville, MN, has been on garden tours, including the pre-tour during the 2000 American Hosta Society Convention in Minneapolis.

Tom is also a 15 year veteran of the business forms, label and printing industry. He started Innovative Printing Corporation in 1988. He later invented, manufactured and licensed four of his identification card products to two major printing corporations in 1995.

Prior to the business world, 6’ 7” Tom was a professional basketball player in Germany and Sweden in 1978 and 1979. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1977 with a degree in business.

Tom says, "I hope to solve the problems I encountered in my own gardening experience and offer those solutions and gardening ideas to the public via my newsletter, blog and speaking engagements. At the same time, I want to offer the very best hostas and related products at an affordable price to the public. These hostas will be provided with important information allowing gardeners to maximize the potential of their hostas and dollars spent."

Joseph Husby, Vice President

Since the age of 17, Joe has been our Vice President at HostasDirect. That seems very young to have that title but it is well deserved. He is a key part of our company. Joe was valedictorian at Roseville Area High School in the class of 2007. He graduated High School with a perfect 4.0 grade point average and went 12 straight years with perfect attendance at school! Joe is attending the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology Honors program. Joe is well versed in every aspect of computer technology, including computer repair, software programming, web design, database management, networking, and everything else.

Joe brings many skills and talents to HostasDirect and its valued customers.  Joe:

• Designs our e-mail newsletters
• Customized our database of over 6,300 hostas, along with Jeff VerSteeg, Pat Mora, and Luke Weinhagen
• Created the signs we use at our retail site
• Improved our credit card system
• Improved our shipping label & software programs
• Constantly tweaks and improves the website
• Created internal reports
• Is building our new label website
• Has improved our customer service operation
• Provides leadership during our sales
• Provides good decision making and leadership skills
• Takes photos and video for the website

Joe has also built his own website of his family's beautiful garden. In addition, he is heavily involved with computer operations at his church and has improved their website. In his free time, Joe is a unicyclist, outstanding saxophone player, an actor, and has his own computer consulting business where he has about 50 customers. You can often find him working on HostasDirect projects well past midnight, including weekends!

A very driven and being of service hard worker, Joe is still humble and a lot of fun!

Mary Alexander, "Mrs. Everything"

We are very fortunate to have Mary Alexander on staff at HostasDirect. Mary lives across the street from owner, Tom Carlson. She is married to a former high school basketball teammate of Tom's, Jon Alexander. Originally from Michigan, Mary was a top student majoring in math at Alma College where she met Jon. Mary and her family have trained over 30 service dogs for the physically disabled, deaf or hard of hearing with Hearing and Service Dogs of Minnesota www.HSDM.org. She has also been involved with helping autistic children and her kids' schools.

Mary has three children, two of which are still in college and all three are/were top students. Son, Chris, is a senior at Illinois Wesleyan. He just left for 5 months of college in Australia. Daughter, Jennifer, is a sophomore at The College of Saint Benedicts in Minnesota where she studies physics and math. All three have worked for HostasDirect to earn money for school and other needs.

Working with plants is a passion for Mary. She has created beautiful gardens of her own. Mary is involved with almost all aspects of HostasDirect including: selecting the hostas we sell, business strategy, accounting, proofreading, and the very important job of caring for and shipping hostas. She is a very creative and caring packager. Your personal notes and comments on your packing lists come from Mary.

Marcia Fluer, "Hosta Queen (HQ)"

I've been a fan of HostasDirect since I fell in love with hostas. And here I am working with the HD team. Why, you might ask?

First, I love hostas. Second, I hit it off with HD’s founder, Tom Carlson (here-after referred to as Our Fearless Leader or OFL) who thought I might offer a different perspective on the world of hostas.

My love affair with hostas started as a shotgun wedding 18 years ago. I moved into a house that might as well face north on all sides. Shade, shade, shade and more shade.

I thought I was doomed and would have to give up gardening and take up another Minnesota hobby like hockey until I started shopping for shade plants and found hostas. What started as grudging admiration for their tolerance turned into a full blown obsession. Hostas are AMAZING. They ARE colorful. They come in sizes and textures that are worthy of Project Runway. Lights! Camera! Plant!!!

I’ve raised hundreds of hostas successfully, killed a few and survived slugs, hailstorms and cottonwood trees. I’ve made some dumb mistakes like planting sun tolerant hostas in near darkness and putting blues in the sun. So, like you, I’m still learning.

In the future I’ll share some insights, make some suggestions and whine a little. Hope you don’t mind.

Laura Nelson

Laura is originally from Barrington, Illinois. She is an intern and a senior at the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management. She helps us with a wide-range of activities, including: writing, editing and improving our website, optimizing our web site, marketing, advertising, customer service, accounting, retail sales, and packing and shipping orders. She has already made some wonderful improvements to our company. She plays club volleyball at the U of M and is a huge Chicago Cubs fan. You may have seen her on the lead story of the WCCO news last winter being interviewed about mass transit at the U of M or helping out with promotions at University of Minnesota sporting events.

Chris Alexander

Chris has been working for HostasDirect since its inception as he lives across the street from me. Chris just graduated with a double major in chemistry and business from Illinois Wesleyan. We missed him last summer when he studied in Australia. Chris is hoping to start law school soon to become a patent attorney. Chris has been involved with our computer operations, photography, retail sales, customer service, and engineering.

Jeff Versteeg (HostasDirect alum)

While Jeff was a senior at Northwestern University in Roseville, along with Luke Weinhagen and Don Raleigh at Evolve Systems, he custom-programmed our shopping cart software to integrate with our HostaSearch™ database, server, and about 9 other pieces of software. It was a huge, complicated project. Jeff rose to the challenge - while still in school! Jeff was both an Academic and Basketball All-American at Northwestern College in Roseville graduating in 2005. After graduating he passed up foreign basketball opportunities to work at KPMG LLP. Jeff's sister, Pam, is married to Matt, my first cousin's son. Every time I use our software I think of Jeff. Jeff is married to his college sweetheart, Whitney, and they're expecting their first child!

Yuriy Yefimenko

Yuriy, age 32, is an intern and in the MBA program at the Metropolitan State University. He also has extensive studies in agronomy and a degree in mine engineering from Ukrainian State Academy of Water Engineering in his native Ukraine. He has worked in horticulture in northern Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, and with another company in Minnesota. Yuriy is married to his lovely wife, Gnanna. Yuriy is an extremely determined, hardworking, trustworthy, and intelligent employee with valuable ideas and a great sense of humor! We are very lucky to have him!

Danielle Dykema

Danielle is a sophomore studying plant genetics at the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences, just one mile from our headquarters. Danielle, Yuriy and Tom will be conducting some experiments soon with our hostas. Sorry folks, the tests are secret! In her spare time, Danielle works at the U of M giving tours for incoming students and is also dating our tech guy, Joseph Husby.

Courtney & Jennifer Smalley

Jennifer is studying psychology and Japanese at the University of Minnesota and Courtney is studying animation at MCTC.

Mary Billadeau

Mary, age 29 and holding, worked for 22 years for a local garden center. In addition to her many talents and depth of experience, she keeps everyone in laughing! Mary works primarily in packaging and shipping, as she loves working with the plants.

Lisa Rygg

Lisa, age 29 and holding, also worked at a local garden center and also helped us with packing and shipping orders. She recently had emergency retina surgery and is making a good recovery.

Pat Mora, Database Creator

Pat Mora, a hard working, knowledgeable and generous hosta lover, is the researcher and founder of our search engine and database. A past President of the Kansas City Hosta Society, and a frequent visitor of many garden tours and conventions, Pat has made an enormous contribution for gardeners world-wide through setting up and developing her database. Pat is the recipient of the 2005 Presidents Award from the American Hosta Society.

Since 1994, Pat has been collecting and entering data into her custom designed computer software. The HostaSearch™ Database and Search Engine can organize tens of thousands of pieces of data about hostas in a way that can also be selectively found (or searched) by a computer. In other words, she designed a way as the old clich states, to find a needle in a haystack. When there are over 6,100 different hostas with an abundance of different plant characteristics, and you realize the expense of hostas, this database is a wonderful development. If you are looking for particular characteristics for your hostas or for hybridizing, simply select one of the 70 categories you are interested on the search engine, scroll down the drop down menu, and click search. Like magic, all of the hostas meeting that criteria show up on your screen.

Pat hopes her database and search engine can help gardeners in a variety of ways. Gardeners can select their plants intelligently to fit their special needs, learn more about the wide variety of fun and beautiful options for hostas; hybridizers can use this database for their development efforts, and researchers can use the database for genetic uses for disease resistance and more.

Simba, rabbit hunter extraordinaire

Carrie Austin & Cory Thomford

Bill & Andrea McKee

Posed here with H. 'Fatal Attraction'

Allison McKee

The Twin Cities Home & Garden Show, 2005