Thomas Johnson, left, and his partner, Kirk Hansen, tend one of their giant hosta plants at their Sebright Gardens Nursery near Salem.

Thomas Johnson and Kirk Hansen have combined a successful marriage with a successful nursery, Sebright Gardens, an ornamental plant enterprise that features hardy plants such as hostas.

Sebright Gardens is a 34-acre nursery featuring a 4-acre display garden that eschews annuals and vegetables for purely ornamental perennials such as selectively bred hostas, ferns and ground-cover plants.

Johnson, 53, is also a fan of exotic birds, so he named his nursery enterprise, just northeast of Salem, for the Sebright chicken, a bantam poultry breed kept not for egg or meat production but as an “ornamental,” similar to the nursery’s products.

Hansen, 55, said the division of duties is clear at Sebright Gardens: “Everyone comes to me with questions about the gardens, then they all go to Thomas with questions about what’s in the retail.”

In addition to the display gardens, Sebright encompasses 24 acres of a tucked-away patch of ground adjacent to the area’s famous lakebed farmlands. Ten nearby acres support the production of bearded irises through a separate business Johnson runs on his own, called Mid-America Garden.

“I’ve been breeding irises for 30 years and I ship to 40 different countries” with the Mid-America sole-proprietor flower business, Johnson said. “We were here for only about 4 or 5 years and were just doing the mail-order business with the irises an a few open houses for the hostas, but we were being stretched.”

Hansen, who also holds down a full-time job as an airline flight attendant, was the impetus for the hosta nursery.

“I met Kirk, and he brought up the idea of a nursery,” Johnson said. “So we sold off the day-lily business to a neighbor and together started Sebright (in 2004).”

Visitors to Sebright Gardens are invited to meander through the lush acreage to get ideas of what they might want to purchase, and are then directed to a sales area with the hostas and other plants arranged alphabetically.

Johnson said he sells 600-700 varieties in the sales area at any one time, but grows about 1,200 varieties in all.

“It’s probably the biggest collection of hostas in the country, but for sure the biggest collection this side of the Mississippi River,” he said.

Much of the sales of Sebright’s hostas, ferns, epimediums (shade-loving ground-cover plants) and other plants — all planted by hand by Johnson — come through on-site purchases. But the business is also involved in several “co-vendor” events throughout the year that add to the stream of visitors and buyers to Sebright.

For their part of the Cascade Nursery Trail — an alliance of “independent, family-owned, specialty nurseries” stretching from Salem to Canby, Silverton and Molalla — “we host the annual sale event (Aug. 22nd’s “Jewel Box Plant Sale”) where everyone comes together here,” Johnson said.

Other Trail events include a May open house, the July “Mid-Summer Madness” and the Sept. 26-27 “Colors of Fall Festival,” he said. In addition, Sebright hosts the Salem Hardy Plant Society’s annual sale, which this year falls on Sept. 16.

“The big difference and what sets us apart from other business is the garden,” Johnson said. “For a plant collector, it’s kind of a botanical wonderland for people that love plant material.

“Even in a year like this, when people are shut in and locked in, they can come to the gardens here because they can do social distancing and still enjoy being outside, listen to the birds and look at the flowers.”