Petunias first, then herbs.

Richters Herbs is a family nursery and seed company at Goodwood, Ontario, in Durham Region, north-east of Toronto. English Wikipedia says it was founded in 1967 as a flower and garden centre by Otto and Waltraut Richter, and an interview with Waltraut Richter published on the company’s website gives the same year: “Otto and Waltraut Richter established Richters in 1967.”

In that interview she recalls coming to Canada from Austria in 1953 with four young children, and buying a run-down property with greenhouses in the Markham area, where the couple grew petunias and marigolds to bring in customers before she began growing herbs from seed brought over from Austria and Germany. English Wikipedia places that first site at Locust Hill, a hamlet now within Markham, and says the Richters traded in their early years as Otto Richter and Sons, citing a 1982 report in the Kingston Whig-Standard.

A 2017 profile on Food and Farming, a Durham Region agriculture site, describes how the herb business began: a corner of the greenhouse set aside for herbs with German labels, which customers who had come for tomatoes or geraniums started asking about. As interest grew, the profile says, so did the corner, from basics such as mint and parsley to a much wider range.

Television helped too. In the company-hosted interview, Waltraut Richter says the Canadian cookery writer Madame Benoit sent a long list of herbs in 1972, asking whether Richters stocked them, and that the request led to an appearance with her on the CBC programme Take 30, presented by Adrienne Clarkson; she recalls that the broadcast brought in about 1,500 letters, and that she was then invited to speak to clubs and church groups.

A catalogue, a newspaper and a move.

Press attention helped. English Wikipedia says a 1969 feature in the Toronto Star brought the Richters wide attention, and that their first catalogue followed in 1970. The 2017 Food and Farming profile also dates the catalogue to 1970, describes it as running to nearly 100 pages, and says it appears each December for the season ahead. Conrad Richter, Otto and Waltraut’s son, told the site he had helped his father with the catalogues since grade school and had worked on every edition since the beginning.

The move to Goodwood came under pressure. English Wikipedia, citing a 1978 Toronto Star article, says the herb operation moved from Locust Hill to Goodwood in 1975 after the family farm was expropriated for the planned community of Seaton; citing a 1995 Toronto Star report, it adds that the greenhouses were cut from about 29,000 square feet to 6,000, which badly hurt the bedding-plant side of the business.

Herbs then took over. Wikipedia and the 2017 profile both say the Richters had specialised in herbs by the mid-1980s, and Wikipedia says they began adding commercial growers as customers. It credits Conrad Richter, who holds a master’s degree in botany — from the University of Toronto, the 2017 profile says — with setting up seed-collecting arrangements in Nepal, Ghana, China and Ecuador in the 1980s, citing a 1998 magazine article, and says the range had reached about 800 varieties by 2000, according to the Toronto Star. In 2017 Conrad Richter put the number at about 600 to 700, with seed sourced from every continent except Antarctica.

Seed houses and their catalogues.

The seven brands in this group are all garden seed houses: Stokes Seeds, Jung Seed, Richters, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Premier Seeds Direct, Eden Brothers and Harris Seeds. Seed houses in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to catalogue names that now belong to larger groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a garden centre rack to a grower’s order book.

A seed brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single packet than by a name, a catalogue and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its trial grounds or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its seed is actually grown, tested and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its seed comes from and how its packets and catalogues have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

“Everything herbal.”

Richters remains a Richter family business. The 2017 Food and Farming profile and a 2019 Ontario Farmer report cited by Wikipedia both name Conrad Richter as president. Wikipedia says all the plants Richters sells are grown in its own greenhouses or on its site, citing a profile in Mother Earth Living; that the company holds the certifications needed to export seeds and plants to the United States; and that about a quarter of its sales went to American customers, according to the San Francisco Examiner in 1998.

Its range runs from seeds and live plants to dried herbs. Conrad Richter told Food and Farming that customers came to Richters looking for specific, unusual varieties, and that the company had developed some of its own, such as an orange spice thyme that can be grown as a lawn alternative. It also sells mints bred by its partner Jim Westerfield, among them margarita mint and sweet pear mint, and stocks dozens of basils. Wikipedia adds, citing a 1998 Hamilton Spectator report, that Richters had distributors in Australia, Germany and Israel, and notes that its catalogue carries educational notes on growing and using herbs, as the profile also says; “Education is key,” Conrad Richter told it. He said the company had run a free seminar series every year for about three decades, and it posts talks on its YouTube channel. The profile quotes the slogan on its website: “Everything herbal.”

For a design guide, Richters shows how a yearly mail-order catalogue can carry a family nursery’s identity from one generation to the next. Compare Veseys, a Canadian mail-order seed house, and Stokes Seeds, a seed company with operations in Ontario. For this guide we use a herb green and a terracotta with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Richters’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.