History of Walters Gardens

Family portrait of Harmke Le Poire, Dena Le Poire-Knoll, and Harriet Walters

Rooted in Resilience: The Legacy of Dena Le Poire

In 1909, a 9-year-old girl named Dena Le Poire arrived in America aboard the Ryndam, emigrating from the Netherlands with her parents and brother. Settling in Zeeland, Michigan, the Le Poire family began farming in the sandy fields of West Michigan. They first found work contract growing celery and onions, and later perennial plants.

Dena married John Knoll in 1925, and together they had a daughter, Harriet. Together Dena and John became contract growers of perennials for a local nursery. However, after John’s untimely death in 1934, that partnership dissolved. Dena—now a young widow—refused to give up. She continued growing perennials like Garden Phlox and Gladiolus, and began advertising first in local newspapers and later national magazines. Her entrepreneurial spirit and determination laid the foundation for what would become Walters Gardens.

Dennis and Harriet Walters on their Wedding Day

Knoll & Walters: A Family Business Blooms

As Dena’s business grew, she hired a young man named Dennis Walters in 1942. When Dennis and her daughter Harriet fell in love and married, the business was renamed Knoll & Walters Perennials. With Dena’s guidance and Dennis’s energy, the company began to expand.

Dena would retire from the business she helped build in 1946. Dennis brought in his four brothers to help run the growing operation and the company would be rebranded as Walters Gardens, Inc.

Walters Garden 1963 Catalog Cover

Cedar Break: Risk Meets Reward

The early years of Walters Gardens were filled with challenges. Dennis was a visionary and a risk taker who took bold steps to grow the business. Walters Gardens became one of the first in the industry to publish a color catalog, setting a new standard for marketing perennials. Custom jigs were built to bend pipe for the company’s first greenhouses, allowing for earlier field planting and liner sales.

Cedar Break Farm in 1956

Growth did not come without its challenges. Fire claimed the original storage building for bare root plants, along with the product inside. One of the most symbolic was the acquisition of the Cedar Break farm, a bet on continued expansion that had to be sold when perennial sales did not materialize, before later being reacquired.

Dennis Walters in a Field of Peonies

New Plant Development: Always Growing

From the early days of Walters Gardens, we have never been content with offering the market standard. Finding and sourcing new perennial introductions have always been at the heart of our business. This meant trips to Europe hunting for new Phlox varieties and early forays into the plant patenting process as plant finders approached Dennis with their unique discoveries.

Today our hybridizing department continues to trial and test hundreds of plants across more than 80 perennial genera. Every year tens of thousands of seedlings and selections are evaluated from internal and external sources as we search for groundbreaking new varieties. Plants introduced by Walters Gardens can be found throughout North America and beyond, including through our close partnership with Proven Winners®.

The Tissue Culture Breakthrough

In 1976, Walters Gardens took a bold leap by investing in the first Tissue Culture lab in the perennial industry. At the time, few were investing in this form of plant propagation. But this emerging science allowed us to produce disease-free plants at scale and speed, even leading to the discovery of new varieties through natural mutations.

This move helped establish Walters Gardens as a national leader in perennials, building a name in Hosta introductions and supply, then one of the most popular perennial genera.

Proven Winners Perennials Partnership

In 2010, Walters Gardens entered into agreement as the perennial licensee for Proven Winners North America. The partnership between Walters Gardens and Proven Winners has created a top destination for horticulture professionals looking for outstanding genetics in premium perennials.

Perennials sold in Proven Winners branded containers sell more plants with brand awareness and consumer success. The Proven Package has shown to be essential for brand awareness—consumers know to look for the white Proven Winners branded container when they shop.

Since the beginning of the partnership, Walters Gardens has introduced hundreds of perennials through the brand, with many of them becoming best sellers and household names. Each year the program has continued to expand as consumer demand grows.

Ribbon Cutting as we open our Cedar Break Facility

Cedar Break Greenhouse Expansion

Space limitations at our main site facility led us to open a second greenhouse facility at our Cedar Break Farm in 2022. The new facility immediately added 4 acres of growing space with room for expansion.

The farm which once represented Dennis’ overreach and gamble on the future has come to fruition. Cedar Break has since become central to our company’s growth, a hub of research and development, specialty crops, and greenhouse space.

Walters Gardens Main Campus in 2025

Walters Gardens Today

What began as a 5-acre farm is now a 1,500-acre operation with over 775,000 square feet of greenhouses. We ship millions of plants each year, but we remain family-owned and operated, grounded in the values that Dena Le Poire-Knoll and Dennis Walters instilled over 80 years ago.

We’re proud to support growers and retailers with not just superior plants, but also expert advice, retail support, and a shared passion for perennials.