KARI ELWELL KATZANDER
Mingo Design, New York City 

I have been using Sweet Peet® since 1991. I first used the product in a garden on Fishers Island, NY that incorporated vegetables and flowers in irregular curved beds and pathways. The importance [of] using Sweet Peet® and the discovery of Sweet Peet® for me was the ability to be able to use the product nest to not only beautiful cut flowers but also all of the vegetables that I was now integrating with my flower gardens. My clients loved the color and the smell of the new mulch and were now hooked.

In the early years of purchasing Sweet Peet® and getting this product to this small island off the coast of Connecticut I had to drive approximately 5 hours round trip with a truck, get it loaded and then take a 45 minute ferry boat ride. It was all very well worth it because I was not only picking up a fabulous looking mulch, I was also picking up one of the best soil amendments for the very sandy island soil, making this find the best GOLD in gardening that I had ever found.

I continued using Sweet Peet® all through the years that I owned and operated a landscape contracting and design company on the East Coast. I sold this company, then moved to New York City and started a new landscape design company called Mingo Design, LLC. I found a supplier in Bedford, CT, where I could purchase Sweet Peet® by the bag with a handle. This was a definite bonus as many of the designs that needed to be installed in the city all of the products had to be carried through the people’s homes. Cow manure smelled so awful that many people specifically requested that I not use it. I would tell my customers that Sweet Peet® was just how it sounded—Sweet—in more ways than one, and not to fear!