"US: Stanley Everett "Stan" Iversen, president of innovative Suncrest Nurseries, died Saturday. He was 80."
Iversen, who was honoured in 2011 by the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau as farmer of the year, had spent decades working in pest management and plant pathology when in 1989 he gathered together a group of investors to buy the former Leonard Coates Nursery.
Coates, who had launched his business in 1878, was one of the first nurserymen to specialize in California native plants. Iversen, long associated with the Saratoga Horticulture Foundation, kept that tradition as the nursery doubled in size and grew to offer more than 3,000 different varieties of plants.
Source: contracostatimes.com