Ginny learned, as a youth, to love irises while gardening with her mother, Lilla Edwards Spoon (past President of the Charlotte Iris Society) and Wilma Patrick (an avid plant collector).
Ginny met Don, her husband at their local iris club, the Chesapeake and Potomac (C&P) Iris Society in 1991. They were married in 1994 and moved to Oracle, Arizona for two years where Don worked as a microbiologist on the Biosphere 2 project as a senior scientist and Ginny managed the Intensive Agricultural Biome for several months while the manager went back to Nepal to visit his family. Don and Ginny traveled back to Virginia frequently and worked on their five-acre garden where they had combined their iris collections.
In 1996, they moved back to Cross Junction, VA and started their Winterberry Gardens iris business in earnest where they now grow over 6,000 varieties of irises, 1,000 of them are rebloomers. They both enjoy hybridizing all classes of bearded irises and have over 20,000 seedlings.
Don and Ginny have both earned major awards for their irises from the American Iris Society and Don has won International Awards. Ginny has served as the Regional Vice President of Region 4 (including the District of Columbia and the states of Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and parts of Maryland) and is the past President of the Miniature Dwarf Iris Society.
Ginny is the currently the president of the C&P iris society and Don is the past President of the C&P Iris Society, and they are both official American Iris Society garden judges.
Currently Don is completing their iris book for Timber Press. Ginny completed her Horticultural Business degree at Lord Fairfax Community College, and is the business manager of their Winterberry Gardens iris business. They also grow over 1,000 cultivars of daylilies; have a large collection of daffodils and many other woody plants planted around their 5 acre property.