The year was 1989, I was living in a beautiful house in Chattanooga, studying to be a veterinarian.  My home had a wrap around fence for my dog Fred and a big beautiful garden.  I always loved to garden as a stress reliever from school, what I didn't realize was that Fred loved my garden more than I.  Unfortunately, our style and thoughts of what a garden should look like were not the same.  After many attempts of keeping the flowers in the ground I decided Fred was a more dedicated gardener and named my garden "Fred's Garden".

I moved to Knoxville in 1993 to attend the University of Tennessee's Veterinary College.  After finishing the last of my pre-requisite credits I realized that becoming a veterinarian was not my calling, and changed over to horticulture.  After many years of managing growing operations and different nurseries I started growing myself.  For extra money during my first year of growing I began to pick up landscaping jobs.  After the first three landscaping jobs were finished I decided that was what I wanted to do full-time.  In 2001 I opened up my company Fred's Garden for my old but still frisky sidekick.  Unfortunately, Fred died of cancer a few months later at the age of 14.  My company name is in memory of all the smiles she gave me and our common love of gardening.