On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA September - October 2017 | Page 14

MEMBER PROFILE
B E C K Y H E AT H
Steven Still Retires as Executive
Director of PPA
Steven Still, a long-
time GWA member
and former director,
retires this year from
the Perennial Plant
Association (PPA),
an organization of
growers, educators,
horticulturists, plant
breeders, marketers
and others that he has
led since its founding in 1984.
Like a lot of us, Steve credits a previous
generation, his grandmother, for nurturing
his love and appreciation of irises, peonies,
sweet peas and many other plants that she
grew in her garden “in town.” On the family’s
80-acre farm near Carlinville, Illinois, he
tended the 1½-acre vegetable garden and
sold the excess—cucumbers to the grocer,
tomatoes to local restaurants and cream to
the creamery—to earn a little extra money.
Steve took some of his produce to county
and state fairs, where earned blue (and other
colored) ribbons. He got involved in FFA
and 4-H, where he competed with other
students, judged vegetables and identified
plants and pests in the garden. Steve’s exper-
tise landed