Meet the staff of HostasDirect, Inc.

Tom Carlson, "Founder - Owner"

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 14-year member of the American Hosta Society and Minnesota Hosta Society. Tom worked his way through school by provided gardening services and developed a passion for hostas.. His own garden in Roseville, MN currently contains over 450 varieties of hostas which he's offered for tours including the 2000 American Hosta Society Convention and the Victims of Torture tours.

Tom is also a 15 year veteran of the business forms, label and printing industry. He started Innovative Printing Corporation in 1988 and later invented, manufactured and licensed four of his identification card products to two major printing corporations in 1995.  He's applied his inventive mind to the hosta business by inventing the IDeal Garden Marker, a breakthrough in marker technology that was introduced in February, 2010.

Prior to becoming the entrepreneur he is today, the 6'8" Tom played basketball for  Gustavus Adolphus College where he graduated with a business degree in 1977. He took a brief detour from business in 1978 - 79 to playprofessional basketball in Germany and Sweden.

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

Joe has been our Vice President at HostasDirect since the age of 17.  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 GPA and went 12 straight years with perfect attendance at school (he also hasn't missed a class at the U of M)!  Joe is attending the University of Minnesota in the Institute of Technology Honors program. He plans to major in Computer Science with math and business management minors.  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:

• Designs our e-mail newsletters
• Customized our database of over 7,000 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
• Built our IDeal Garden Marker 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 (he plays in the Minnesota Gopher basketball pep band), 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 (an engineer at 3M). 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, graduated from llinois Wesleyan in 2008.   He is at William Mitchel College of Law studying to be a patent attorney.   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)"

This is Tom Carlson, owner of HostasDirect writing.  I want to be the person that writes about Marcia Fluer, a well-known former news anchor, as she is too humble to write about herself.

We (and you) are extremely fortunate to have Marcia, a former customer, join HostasDirect in August of 2009 and rapidly become a key member of our team!   She writes an informative and fun e-newsletter column, writes on our popular blog, works at our retail store, trade shows, provides valuable management consulting, business strategy ideas and more. Next spring she will also be helping with photography and redoing some of our educational videos.  On top of that, she is just plain fun and sweet.  She is a very smart, a hard worker and multi-tasker.

Marcia and her husband, Philip, installed a beautiful and unique mini train and mini hosta garden in their back yard to compliment their other gardens.   Gardening with hostas is one of her passions, and she has the knowledge and experience to prove it!

Marcia is well loved and highly respected in Minnesota and surrounding states from her eighteen years as a news reporter and anchor at KSTP and WCCO where she had a popular TV show called “Newsday.” 

As one of the first women TV news reporters and anchors in the country she’s a broadcasting pioneer and has been inducted into the Minnesota Broadcaster’s Hall of Fame.

After her broadcasting career she headed up the Public Relations and communications department for ten years at the University of Minnesota leading a staff of 40 in various marketing, publications and news service initiatives.

She is from Toledo, Ohio, graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in English and Theatre, taught high school and college English for 6 years before going into show business as a singer and then moving permanently to the Twin Cities.

She says she is happy with her new friends at HostasDirect where she can do ALL the things she likes best, get her hands dirty and talk gardening all she wants to other ‘hosta nuts’.

Laura Nelson

Laura is originally from Barrington, Illinois. She was an intern with us between her junior and senior year while she was at the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management.   Now, we are fortunate to have her full time.  She helps us with a wide-range of activities, including: writing, editing, improving and optimizing our website,  marketing, advertising, customer service, accounting, and retail sales. She has already made some wonderful improvements to our company. She played club volleyball at the U of M, is a budding golfer, and is a huge Chicago Cubs fan. You may have seen her as the lead story of the WCCO news during the winter of 2008 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 Tom Carlson. Chris graduated with a double major in chemistry and business from Illinois Wesleyan in 2008 and started William Mitchel College of Law in the fall of 2009.  Chris is hoping 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 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, Tom's first cousin's son.  Jeff is married to his college sweetheart, Whitney, and they had a baby in 2009.

Danielle Dykema

Danielle is a junior studying plant genetics at the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences, just one mile from our headquarters. Danielle 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 doing research in the Barley department.

Courtney & Jennifer Smalley

Jennifer is studying psychology and Japanese at the University of Minnesota and Courtney is studying animation at MCTC.   Along with Mary Alexander and some others, these two do a great deal of plant picking and packaging.  That is a challenging job as we ship plants in all different sizes and maturities.   They go through our greenhouse each week to pick the best plants to ship and then package them neatly and securely.   Our packaging crew gets a lot of fan emails.

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

Well, he was but at age 14 he seems to have less interest.

Simba was hired as a guard cat. His only problem is he loves everyone who visits Tom's garden and would stand by purring while you marched off with Tom's plants.

But he puts up a good front. He spends his days on the lookout. Don't be fooled by the fact that his eyes are closed. He has a 6th sense about the presense of humans, mice and rabbits. He tries to capture them all, but in the case of humans, he just captures their hearts. Tom is gaga over Simba so if you don't like cats, or don't like THIS cat, keep it to yourself.

 

Carrie Austin & Cory Thomford

Minneapolis Home and Garden Show 2005

Don't let these ladies fool you.  They can drain your pockets in a short time.  How can anyone say "no" to these two.

Carrie graduated from Stout State in 2009 with a major in golf course management, following her father, Scott.   She is manager of a beautiful course out in Whitefish, Montana. 

Cory graduated from the University of Minnesota in Mechanical Engineering in 2009

Bill & Andrea McKee

Posed here with H. 'Fatal Attraction' while Tom was getting ready for back surgery in 2004.  

This couple keeps work fun with their great sense of humor.

Bill manages probation officers in St. Paul.   He is also a well-known and highly respected basketball coach.   The Minnesota Twins Joe Mauer and NBA's Pat O'Bryant were lucky enough to play for Bill.   Bill was starting guard for the the famous St. Thomas basketball teams in the early 70s and then coached at St. Thomas College, Cretin, Blaine, Anoka Ramsey Jr. College and now is the head girls coach for Moundsview High School.

Andrea is a master organizer.   The only trouble is she organizes by throwing your things away!  Guaranteed a laugh a minute but watch your stuff.

Both have very helpful in a variety of ways to HostasDirect.

Allison McKee

Bill and Andrea's daughter in about 2004 here.   She is now the starting guard for the Moundsview Girls Basketball team.   She is a junior in high school as of 2010

The Twin Cities Home & Garden Show, 2005

One of our first shows, our visitors and us had a ball!

We try ot keep FUN a high priority while we work and visit with customers.   After all, gardening should be FUN and FRIENDLY.