Three years ago this spring I wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times (my third) about the then raging “natives versus exotics” controversy. They called it “Border Wars” and it contained a typo (8,000 versus 12,000 years ago for the recession of the last glaciers, due to my confusion over BC and AD).  Otherwise, it was nearly flawless.  However, I received a bit of negative mail.  Some in the media got contentious—but I still think I was generally correct.

Anyway, it was great fun to engage the purists—the majority being academics—in a debate, even if it was from behind notebooks, keypads and office desks.  I hope one day to have an exchange with these folks in public.  Maybe even in a garden.

Also, thanks to Francois Korn at Seed Quest for publishing the follow-up piece in June, 2006, after the barrage subsided. 

By the way, does anyone else feel like spring of 2006 was a decade ago?

BORDER WAR

The horticultural world is having its own debate over immigration, with some environmentalists warning about the dangers of so-called exotic plants from other countries and continents “invading” American gardens. These botanical xenophobes say that a pristine natural state exists in our yards and that to disturb it is both sinful and calamitous.  In their view, exotic plants will swallow your garden, your neighbors’ gardens and your neighbors’ neighbors’ gardens until the ecosystem collapses under their rampant suffocating growth.

If anything suffocates us, though it will be the environmentalists’ narrow-mindedness.  Like all utopian visions, their dream beckons us into a perfect and rational natural world where nothing ever changes—a world that never existed and never will.

Native plants are the survivalists of the botanical world and in their appropriate settings—wilderness areas, home and botanical gardens, public parks and sidewalks—they bless us with their beauty and awe us with their tenacity.  Our lives would be poor and grim without the strawberry, cranberry, columbine and trillium.  They’ve always been here, in the same way that Native Americans have been; only their arrival and settlement are more ancient.

Their presence illustrates a geologic time, about 12,000 years ago when the last glaciers receded and unimaginable vast deluges swallowed the surface of the future United States—an airplane ride over the Midwest reveals enormous lakes formed by even larger melted ice masses.  As the landscape changed, the botanical world sorted itself out, leaving us with the hardy “natives”.  (It should be noted, though, that many plants now  considered natives—like sycamores, magnolias and cinnamon—arrived from other continents, just as we did.  They are products of adaptation.)

Like human survivalists, natives are also subject to exploitation by the horticultural equivalent of radical fundamentalists.  The anti-exotics argue that gardens should be populated exclusively by native plants, as if the exotics were trying to enter the flowerbed illegally.  The consequences of such a stand could be dire.  Should we eat no onions or garlic, apples or lemons; feast our eyes on no magnificent tulips or roses—all exotics of Eurasian origin?  Should Asians not enjoy their distinctive peppers, tomatoes, beans, squash, sunflowers and corn—all from the Americas?

Indeed, the world’s most popular root crop, potatoes, started life as a staple of the Andean people and achieved its first international fame as a slave food.  By the time it reached France, the “earth apple” was a delicacy likened to truffles; their flowers were featured in tiaras of court ladies.  Exotic indeed.

Should we deprive ourselves of petunias, begonias, impatiens and hollyhocks—not a one of them “native”?  Must we, on pain of being cast out of the garden as horticultural pariahs, deny the elephant his peanuts?  This wouldn’t be merely ridiculous.  It would compare with the denial of human immigration on grounds that certain ethnic groups breed in numbers “too prolific” for the existing elite to tolerate.  Imagine, then, a horticultural ruling class.  No “invasives” need apply; let the lily find another valley.  Such stupid prohibitions of exotic plant species demonstrate only an elitist snobbery that is as dangerous to a free society as it is to a free botany.

No one, and certainly no gardener, grows truly destructive invasive plants in his garden.  The devastating kudzu in the South, star thistle in the West and purple loosestrife in the East were accidental introductions from Asia, most often mixed with the feed and bedding of livestock.  Yet the pro-native, anti-exotic partisans also wish us to stop enjoying the charms of harmless and beautiful plants like Queen Anne’s lace, yarrow, and chicory.  Aside from requiring a bit of weeding, exotics are safe as milk, unless one considers gardening a chore rather than a passionate hobby.  If so, forget the forget-me-nots.

Let’s welcome, as spring arrives tomorrow, as many “huddled masses” of flowers, herbs and vegetables as can fit in our unique melting pot of a nation, unrivaled in its tradition of lush diversity and freedom to grow rampantly.

 
THE NEW YORK TIMES                                      March 19, 2006

NO PLANT LEFT BEHIND

Editorial by George Ball, Chairman and CEO, W. Atlee Burpee & Co.

After taking up the controversial subject of natives versus exotic or “invasive” garden plants in the New York Times Op/Ed pages (see summary below), I learned that although most people agreed, those who didn’t were dissenters who waged a war of personal attacks and threats of embargo on my company.  Missing was any mention, much less refutation, of the facts.  It was as if I violated a taboo.  Not true.  And I certainly did not advocate growing kudzu in one’s garden, as some suggested.  In fact, I pointed out kudzu’s destructive nature in order to distinguish such truly menacing invasives from those that are, as I said, “safe as milk”.  Indeed, someone please cite for me the destruction wrought upon our nation by the dandelion, our most common invasive garden weed, brought to our shores from Asia.  Also, please share it with the hundreds of dandelion farmers in the U.S.

To reiterate, the earth is not a super model; no healthy, vital landscape that includes our dynamic human presence can tolerate the horticultural plastic surgery and botanical bulimia advocated by the gardening extremists, who’ve been seduced by the ideology of “Native Plants Only”.  Again, I suggest that extremism, in the direction either of “pristinism” on the one hand or of unkempt, chaotic gardens and overrun, broken-caged landscapes on the other, is wrong.  Simply stated, the dangers, both real and perceived, of invasives and exotics have been harmfully exaggerated, as have the virtues of natives.  The gardening public should be informed—not proselytized.  Science and scientific opinion in the service of ideology is no science at all, as in the case of Lysenko and his theory of inherited skills, so favored by Stalin.  Far from stinging, Swiftian satire, my proposal, however modest, meant to be playful as well as provocative—a romp rather than a grim-faced, frontal assault on the ornamental “true believers”, hysterically blinded by the sight of too many petunias, morning glories, salvias and impatiens.

With rare exceptions, such as Luther Burbank and L.H. Bailey, America has long suffered a lack of horticultural imagination.  We are a “can do” nation, puritanically oriented away from pleasure gardens.  Recently, on his new TV show, ex-Disney boss Mike Eisner announced, “Type A’s cannot do gardening”.  (He wants yet another by-pass—the new status symbol.)  When we want beautiful gardens, we pay a fee to see them in magic kingdoms, grown in neat rows by immigrant labor.  Heaven forbid we ever actually touch a plant.  Therefore, it’s not surprising that our gardening industry leaders turn, like sunflower heads, to the UK and the Continent and, lately Japan where the fortunate inhabitants bask in the colorful glow of hybridized exotics.  For well over a hundred years, some of America’s prettiest natives have been “discovered” by Europeans and Japanese, hybridized in their adopted homes and reintroduced to us.  Why? Mainly because the citizens of these nations are better educated and, therefore, less politicized about plants.  They have the creativity to appreciate the entire spectrum of botany, not just what their professors and environmental pundits tell them.  Free from such influences, they enjoy the simple virtues of the strong colors, forms and textures found in the many plants of our fabulous, robust country—both wild and tame.

I wish only for our nation’s tent—and garden—to be big.  Many of my critics, especially those in higher education, desire a small seldom-visited, state-supported garden where they can control events, set the agenda and manage the debate.  As in M. Night Shamalyan’s recent, ‘The Village’, a false mythology and religion must keep the citizens in line and trapped in a small and shallow world.  Outside the lonely campuses with their ivory towered gardens, the rest of us enjoy a free and beautiful country.

SEED QUEST                                                   June, 2006

Thanks one and all for the thoughtful feedback about Space Genie.  It was meant to be light-hearted.  Please understand I shall not post readers’ mean-spirited attacks or dyspeptic rants. Sorry if I slightly missed the mark. I appreciate “true believers” and understand your passions. Maybe I’m a bit the same way. I was attempting humor, not advocating a “Bladerunner” world where someone might munch on his arm when he’s hungry.  However, I’ll try to refrain from too many off-the-wall articles.  Focus on the word “try”.  But first, please let me answer the critics as a group.

My short life has seen a revolution in the science as well as public perception of genes.  From the debates of “nature versus nurture” in the 60s and 70s to the Bell Curve to Craig Venter’s self-administered genome mapping to almost weekly developments today, the scene has dramatically changed.  Once genes were taboo in polite company.  Lyndon Johnson’s education experts stated that “all babies are born alike”, a bizarre notion that was widely approved.  Genetic-based differences were regarded with appropriate suspicion, as either counterrevolutionary or echoing 1930s racial theories.  The politics of equality and civil rights dominated scientific forums, and understandably so.

Just as naturally, opinions swung all the way back to such an extreme that by the 80s Richard Dawkins’ ludicrous “The Selfish Gene” became an international best seller.  Suddenly, no one was even similar, nor could we ever be.

Meanwhile, biology steamed ahead, leaving the sociologists on the scientific margins. Genes moved to the forefront at all levels.  Behavior studies and medicine joined animal and plant breeding as major focuses of genetic research.  Twin studies proliferated. The genes of an entire nation, Iceland, came under scrutiny.  Of course, plant and animal breeders—as well as parents—have been familiar with the influence of genes for thousands of years.  Also, traditional societies throughout the world intuitively grasp them.

Discoveries exploded in medical, zoological, agricultural and pharmaceutical worlds, illuminating the effects of genes, chromosomes and cytoplasm, including interactions, inhibitors, sequences and pathways. There is no stopping science. Of course, safety regulations are important.  I know quite a few folks in the industry, but  I know of no scientist or corporate executive who considers safety unimportant.

Throughout history we have had scientific medicines, domesticated animals, domesticated plants, races of humanity, races blended within humanity.  Cultures and civilizations have risen, flourished and collapsed.  Just where I was raised, there were the Clovis, the Mississippian, the Illiniwek, the French, British, and now us.  One can view them over time, and trace them on a map like a colony of algae.  The flow of genes has played a crucial role in all of them.

Consider world travel, one of the foundations of the horticulture industry.  From exploration of the Middle East, China, Africa, and India came countless herbs, spices and medicinal plants—virtually every grain and vegetable, as well as many beverages, consumed in Europe for a millennium—all from new genes.  Then, with the New World came yet another influx of major transformative crops, including corn, tarot root, tomatoes, cocoa, tobacco, winter squash, potatoes and peanuts.  More genes!

Each of these cultivars began life as an extraordinarily different plant in the wild.  What were the Chinese, Indians, Africans and Americans to do?  Leave the potatoes in the mountains, the corn in the fields, the eggplant, pepper, tarot and tomatoes in jungles?
Then, upon encountering these crops in indigenous markets, would the European explorers have been wise to toss them aside, as if of no importance?  Of course not.

So it is with laboratory discoveries of a plant’s behavior and potential for variation on a cellular level, and even more closely on a genetic level.  Shall we ignore a cost savings in terms of farmland needed to feed a nation, province or village? If a plant and a harvesting machine can be designed together and save backbreaking labor, shall we not pursue them?  Do farm workers wish for their children and grandchildren to work in the sun all day?

I assume that gene transfer technology will continue to make great progress, as it does now, with many regulations and safeguards in place.  Risk and reward need to be in balance.  If scientists can create a new form of rice that can cure an entire continent’s chronic blindness, they must take some risks.  Agriculture and medicine share many ethical and moral dilemmas, more each generation. Would starving people wish to make a distinction between an heirloom and a hybrid?

I feel little sympathy for extremists on either side. We at Heronswood, Burpee and The Cook’s Garden practice the art of plant breeding and trait selection, a traditional form of “genetic engineering”, helped only once over a 10,000 year history—by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s, an Austrian monk working out math problems using garden peas.  From his discoveries to Craig Venter’s “creative life forms”, there hasn’t been so much qualitative as quantitative change.  If folks are fearful of new types of species then I wonder what they must feel when they visit a pet store or garden center? Or how about at Wegman’s produce section? 
 
I remember at a Jewel Foodstore in Chicago in 1980, watching a white-bearded Polish immigrant—a watchcap on his head—almost faint with wonder as he lifted high a huge bunch of ‘Flame’, the first seedless red grape. His eyes saucered. He was fresh off the jet and a world away from the emptiness of Soviet era grocery stores.  I thought he was going to weep for joy.  The USSR brought plant biology and breeding to a standstill and kept it there for more than three generations.  Plant scientists were either executed or perished in the Gulag.  Such is the triumph of ideology over science

Nature is the revolutionary—science is merely its avant-garde.

My predecessor David Burpee opined toward the end of his life that he regretted only that he would not live to breed the plants of other planets with earth’s. Odd, but then he was a genius born in 1893 who was interviewing a newspaper reporter in the late 60s, still a hot time in the space race, when many folks in the US were confident that, eventually, extraterrestrial life would be found. As I noted last year, ET, or perhaps just a field of intergalactic ferns, may still be found. However, I shall not live to fulfill Mr. Burpee’s dream, much as I might wish. His casual observation expressed a profound understanding of agricultural genetics. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the fabulous promise of somatic embryogenesis—whereby substantial time and cost are reduced to improve crop plants—but he would have approved.

Nevertheless, my dreams aren’t as fanciful. I look forward to new cultivars resulting from genetic engineering—not space travel. I’d prefer new varieties that add unknown colors to gardens. Taupes, mauves, salmons (more salmons!), corals and, of course, pinks. A luminous shade of clear pink, with no grey or blue in it, is as mystical as any color you could have. And with new light will come new intensities, both high and low. Perhaps we shall see truly black flowers soon.

Yellows and blues could use help too. There’s already a great range of yellows, with corresponding emotional evocations, from lovingly warm to cheerfully cool. Widen it from blazing hot to almost freezing. Also, blue is a treasure box of subtlety and moodiness. My favorite is midnight blue which combined with lemon yellow is unforgettable. Twenty years ago Harris had a delightful multiflora petunia series, now long gone, called ‘Ribbons’. The dark blue and white striped, with the yellow, were stunning in a confetti-like mixed bed. Picnic time or evening repose, never a dull moment with ‘Ribbons’.

I suppose I’ll settle in for the remainder of my life with my own Forrest Gump box of chocolates here on earth. Other planets just may be more boring than earth. Nice to dream of them and of other suns, other spectra and other eyes, but I won’t oversleep. “You snooze, you lose”, as we say in business.

However, within reach of my lifetime are quantum leaps in gene transfer, which will usher in more of “les choses belles et etrangeres”, greatly to be desired. (However, I remember folks getting so upset in the 90s about Dolly the sheep, and wondering “Why the fuss?”) Plant/animal hybrids, animal/plant hybrids, animal/animal hybrids, plant/plant hybrids. Tiny little trees, 50 foot tall lilies of the valley. A tomato named “Porky”. A cow that grows its own grass. (Indeed, it was only a few hundred years ago that melons were thought to be the source of New World wild sheep.) Some advantages would be clear—plants could move about when they needed, in severe drought, for instance. Also, they would easily avoid inbreeding depression by choosing mates from other forests, since botanical eyes would eventually appear. Here comes Mr. Green Genes, indeed.

On the animal side, we humans could make our own food too, from time to time, or organ-by-organ, photosynthesizing from special areas of our limbs or head, or else via internal metabolizing like roots and bulbs do. Not so much “getting and spending we lay waste our powers”. Maybe Wordsworth was thinking of those little lambs popping out of the exotic melons, instead of daydreaming as his eyes floated across the bucolic green fields.

As we slog into the New Year, I want to share one of my personal enthusiasms with readers.

This pastime requires little or no expense, can be done with minimal or no equipment, and engaged in wherever you happen to be. It can be practiced in solitude or with others. No batteries or instructions are required.

Let us welcome 2009 with a celebration of Drudgery. I admit Drudgery does not evoke any of the glittering promises of advertising and the media circus, the words that invariably arrive with an exclamation point. Sexy! New! Fun! Cool! Exciting!

Drudgery is none of those things, and takes a certain quiet pride in the fact.  Rarely does the word arrive with an exclamation point at its side. Samuel Johnson, the great English essayist and creator of the first comprehensive English dictionary, defined “lexicographer” as “a harmless drudge.”

The painter Gauguin wrote in his journal, “Work is leisure.” Yet when I think about it, his might be an exceptional case. “Monsieur Gauguin, what do you do for a living?” “My profession is painting beautiful partly clad native women in the tropical paradise where I live.” It would be superfluous to ask if his job came with a good 401K program.

One reason to accept the beauty of Drudgery is that it comprises much of what we call work, and not a little of what we call recreation. The author Logan Pearsall Smith wrote, “The test of a vocation is the love of the Drudgery it involves.” (I wonder if he was a gardener).

Do not confuse Drudgery with its sibling Hard Work. There are certain people who complain, with great self-satisfaction, about all the Hard Work they do.

I do not deny the existence of Hard Work. I do not begrudge a soldier assigned to deactivating land mines that his is Hard Work. I concede to the Emergency Room physician who tends to patients nonstop for 18 hours that this is Hard Work indeed. Hard Work is the lot, too, of the diamond miners in Africa who work in unspeakable conditions. Working three jobs to support your family can be called only Hard Work.

There are other kinds of Hard Work that are less extreme or debilitating. To labor at a task which is altogether uncongenial is Hard. Working in a nasty and unsupportive workplace is most Hard. To work at something for which you have no aptitude: Hard again. It is sure hard to accomplish one’s task without adequate tools or guidance.

But when an executive or politician preens himself on his Hard Work, what he’s really talking about is diligent application, the persistence needed to accomplish a task. For him to complain of this as Hard Work is like a cow complaining of all the grass it must chew, or a hen kvetching about the ordeal of laying eggs.

If you consider your day’s work and grade the degree of difficulty of each task from 1 to 10, you will probably land in the sweet spot of Drudgery, somewhere between Gauguin’s 1 or 2 and the land mine remover’s 10. 

In decision-making, sometimes the Hardest thing to do is also the easiest. Often the greatest challenge is to step away from the task for a time, and come back to it later, with fresh eyes and a rested, open mind.

Many a military, investment or marketing blunder might have been averted if one brave soul had the temerity to propose that the assembled company of Hard Workers go home and play with their children.

It was as he was lowering himself into his bathtub that the Greek scientist Archimedes had his “Eureka” moment. I doubt the discoverer of specific gravity grumbled about the Hard Work involved in bath taking.

Contemplating drudgery brings to mind the image of Japanese Zen monks sweeping the sand in a temple garden. They look happy.  There is contentment in their movements. They turn sweeping into poetry,  a chore into an exercise of mindfulness.

We are, all of us, fated to lives filled with Drudgery. How very lucky we are.

Happy Gardening New Year!

“Nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit”, I muttered to myself last week as I wove around Manhattan.  My midtown hotel was practically empty and the traffic light for mid-December—a terrible season for retailers.  In the hotel bar guests stared glumly at each other, mostly Brits and Europeans.  The waitress said, “A year ago this place was packed—it’s unbelievable”.

I encountered in conversations with friends two unusual gardening-related topics in New York City:  the “roof garden” craze continues to grow non-stop; and the cut-flower market remains quite strong, despite the economy. These two trends seem a bit unusual to me. They’re nationwide—not only in New York City—especially the roof gardens.

First, I love roof gardens.  However, why do people applaud so strenuously an idea to grow a garden, not in a front or back yard, but on a roof—that is, the topside of the ceiling?  It seems like a Will Rogers story.  I have spent a long career persuading folks to plant a few steps from their backdoor.  Now it seems no effort is needed to convince society to put a garden forty feet straight up, and where few people will see it, much less know it’s there.

Another big deal these days is tropical cut flowers. Tropical cut flowers? Indeed, they travel by jet, so that arrangers can have them in a “just so” state of freshness.  Seems excessive or Kubla Khan-like to me.  Let’s see, we have to cut our carbon emissions, wear a sweater indoors, buy a hybrid car, eat only seasonal food. . .  So, what’s wrong with drying flowers from the late summer garden?  They are dried by the air in the atmosphere; I can’t think of a method more friendly to the environment.

At Burpee we offer Sunflowers, Celosia, Amaranth, Baby’s Breath, Bells of Ireland, Strawflower, Statice, Chinese Lanterns—these are as easy as, well, apple pie. Plus, they’re truly gorgeous. Might save a bit of dough. Keep the air free of turbine fumes streaming off the jets from Colombia and Thailand filled with their precious cargoes of. . . . tropical flowers. . . . ?

I had the chance recently to experience two institutions you wouldn’t think at first glance were alike.  Over a few weeks I visited a well-regarded liberal arts college and later a famous casino.  The bizarre similarities were both fascinating and disturbing.

Who benefits?

The college is bookish, so it’s not surprising that the professors were the top-level entertainers, while the president and his entourage were the intellectual equivalent—if that is conceivable—of Donald Trump or Steve Wynn.  However, I was taken aback by the minor role students play on the campus.  They seemed elfin compared to the faculty who were either straightforward, hard-working types or “rock stars”. This wasn’t education as I remembered it. When I was in school the teachers were charmingly dull, keeping a respectful distance from the students and vice versa.  Nowadays, the atmosphere is casual, if not downright clubby, and centered around the teachers rather than the students—more like junior high school than college.  I wondered, truly, what my friend’s son was “betting” and what chances he had, since the “house” was so heavily favored.  College life has become an illusory family.  How will this prepare him for the future?

What are the stakes?

Students and parents alike seem to be placing on the table not merely a great deal of money, but an enormous amount of time as well—hour after hour, year after year.  Yet, what was the house—the college—standing to lose?  It seemed to me to be quite uneven.

Who wins?

I pressed my friend about the selection of this particular college to the point that it bugged him.  (I learned later that he had let his son decide.)  I asked practical questions.  What was the average salary of alumni?  What students went on to Nobel-type glory?  Had any students become famously successful and wealthy (like many of the professors)?  Were there accurate stats about grades?  (Turns out there weren’t even any grades.)  What about intramural-type academic competitions?  None of the above. I wondered how a person could make a college decision without data.

Apparently, the dominant criteria today include the social relevance of the programs, ethnic and cultural diversity, and the “buzz” about the place—in other words, public relations.  Prestige is conferred to colleges often by image and hand-me-down reputation.  However, mold is mold regardless of its age.  For instance, this school has had for many years a reputation for “radicalism”, and that figured into my friend’s son’s decision.  It seemed sad and even a bit ridiculous that a “radical” place would be chosen in such a conventional, middle-class way.  “My son feels comfortable here.”  I’m sure there were deeper reasons, but how many and how deep, I didn’t ask. The process seemed almost offhand, as if the heart stopping amount of money—not to mention four years of prime time human life—had the same importance as a vacation budget.

On the other hand, most colleges use primarily statistical criteria for student selection.  Like gamblers and tourists, prospective students drift from one resort-like campus to another, while the colleges profile them down to the last demographic, grade and SAT score.  Bit one-sided to me.

Herr Professor Faustus

A couple of weeks later, my friend and I drove to Atlantic City and hit a few casinos.  What a disconcerting juxtaposition.  The uncanny similarities include the “professorial” pomposity of the dealers and spooky vibe of the management whose professionalism surpasses that of their officious academic counterparts.  There are even amusing security staff parallels.  The food is better, but not as much as you might think.

Qui bono?

The recent economy has been rough on the casinos. A few of the gaming rooms were almost empty at midday, not unlike an afternoon college chemistry lab.  (Students use their computers in their dorms, thereby spending incredible amounts of time there—quite different from the 70s.  In my day we roamed all over campus when we weren’t entombed in the library.)

So, is the one-armed bandit the internet computer terminal?  Indeed, what are the true stakes?  A Faustian promise of internet-based omniscience, like the casino jackpots that occur so rarely as to be immaterial?  I know what happens to chronic gamblers—they die young and broke. How long does it take—four years?  What happens to the contemporary student’s soul?

And the remoteness, the emptiness, the pallor of the faces—be they mature adults in Atlantic City or young adults at college—was chilling. The place-of-no-place quality.  Here I am—nowhere.  It is definitely the opposite of a garden.

The true payoff for the kids is, alas, graduation.  No wonder they’re happy to leave.  Therefore, I felt an adolescent twinge of “the first time” as we pulled onto the turnpike and headed north out of godforsaken Atlantic City (great place to buy gold jewelry, though). 

Time to re-evaluate, in my view, the equally godforsaken liberal arts colleges. For example, bolster up science and technology. The hundreds of state-run engineering schools in the US are definitely not casino-like.  No “celebrity” professors, no “rock star” college presidents.  But the relatively inexpensive educations lead to great jobs in important global industries.  These would point to a brighter future than do such courses as “Appreciative Inquiry”, “Pop Culture Hegemony” or “The World Café”.  The kids can catch those acts later at Atlantic City, Foxwood or Vegas.

The Great Financial Meltdown of 2008 has left investors and politicians stupefied, collectively scratching their heads in the absence of real explanations or solutions. Pundits sagely call for greater “transparency,” so investors, regulators and the public might better assess an offering’s underlying value.

What we really want is VISIBILITY. Wall Street’s savvy insiders basically couldn’t see what they were buying. They were driving well over the speed limit with their eyes closed—and crashed. In this case it’s the innocent bystanders who are injured and pay the price.

Today there is one place left where the prudent capitalist can invest in confidence. In this investor’s oasis, there is full WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visibility. Here is an investment that operates in full sunlight, offering a real time, 360 view of the investment landscape, so you can continuously fine-tune your strategy.

American Capitalists, don your jeans and straw hats and join me in the Great American Garden. You have nothing to lose but your losses. This is the only place where your investment yields, at least, a 25-to-1 return.

This astonishing garden-grown ROI is not modern-day speculative sleight-of-hand, but real, tangible and fungible. The pragmatic, prudent, down-to-earth principles and values that made this country great still work–and can put delicious food on your table and green in your wallet.

In the garden you reap what you sow, and can watch your assets grow before your eyes. And, unlike any stock you ever bought, you can enjoy your returns sautéed, boiled, braised, broiled or served raw. This is interest worthy of the name.

Skeptical? Let’s look at the numbers. In January 2009, our company, W. Atlee Burpee, will offer a collection of six packets of vegetable seed ($20.00 if purchased separately) for $10.00. This $10.00 investment in seed–tomatoes, carrots, green beans, lettuce, peas and bell peppers—can produce up to $1,500.00 worth of vegetables on a mere tenth of an acre.

Compared with the produce at your local supermarket … quite simply, there is no comparison. Your garden-grown vegetables offer flavor and freshness that, literally, money can’t buy. These are tomatoes that take pride in being tomatoes, carrots that exemplify a noble heritage of taste and quality.

Today butterhead lettuce is on sale at my local grocery for a $1.75 a head. Burpee offers a packet of 350 butterhead seeds for $3.00, each seed producing one head of lettuce. Making allowances for germination failure, we’re talking one cent per head. So, conservatively, the garden yield will have a supermarket value of about $500.00 for a $3.00 investment.

There are additional cost factors. Let’s estimate at a maximum five dollars for water and a bit of compost. Labor cost: if you don’t garden yourself and hire a gardener, figure 2 hours each week for a month @ $10.00 per hour: a total of $80.00. You’re still saving $415.00. Incredible, eh?  No wonder, then, that our beloved new friends, the French, call money, “lettuce”.  When you parlay the labor costs across all six crops, the labor gets proportionately cheaper. The bottom line? We’re talking about a return that guarantees $150.00 earned for every $1.00 invested.

Yet this ratio fails to factor in the abundant and tangible non-financial returns: flavor, freshness, a nutritional bonanza for your family. The transcendent pleasures of growing things, watching them grow, being self-reliant and self-sufficient. Replacing the banal gyrations of the marketplace with the elements of sun, earth, and water, and reducing the need for costly anti-depressants.

Over the years my sharp-eyed Wall Street friends have regarded the seed business as hopelessly naïve and outmoded, as if we were selling detachable shirt collars and spats, or music for player pianos. They’ve talked to me as if I were in a dream world, and needed to wake up. Alas, they were the dreamers, and their avaricious dreams are now everybody’s nightmare. I look forward to visiting their gardens.

The newspaper and magazine industries continue their steep slide into oblivion.  At risk, literally, is the public square, since newspapers emerged a couple hundred years ago in order to deliver the news—and often rules and regulations—individually to the newly literate and urban citizens who used to receive it from the town crier, or read it on placards in the neighborhood and village centers.  We see its relic form in today’s supermarket bulletin boards.  However, mass media—radio, film, television and computers—broke the newspaper’s monopoly on the debate among the educated, enlightened and informed.  No one can take the place of a big city newspaper editor and his staff.  When they go, the world goes.  And, unbelievable as it seems, newspapers and magazines are going.

This isn’t merely a nostalgic loss recalled in a daydream.  This nightmare signifies the collapse of an intellectual order that accompanied the rise of the printing press in 1440 and not only ushered in the modern forms of scientific discovery, democracy and free speech, but also fostered public education, literacy and upward mobility, particularly in the US, still the world’s most hopeful beacon of wealth, health, personal fulfillment and happiness, if not the only one.  Anyone emigrating from the US to Europe?  We take free speech for granted.  Foreigners don’t.

The internet threatens not only to shatter this benevolent order—this real intellectual world—but also to prevent any new or evolving one to emerge, since its virus-like replicating quality prevents inquiry, thought and orderly discussion, replacing them with a chaos of dull and addictive ephemera.  For example, as difficult as it is to accomplish, it is much easier to publish a correction in a newspaper than on a blog or journalistic website.  In the predator-filled worldwide web, a “correction” breeds new versions of the original mistake, as occurs regularly on Wikipedia.

Consider slavery.  I believe that slavery would not have been abolished, had not the newspapers—as well as hymnals—been allowed to flourish.  Today’s international scourges—illegal drugs, child abuse, illiteracy, pornography—are not attacked by major editorial voices on the web.  Indeed, several of these plagues are spread by the internet.  Imagine if the web had replaced newspapers in the 1830s.  Slave trafficking would’ve boomed rather than been held up to intense scrutiny.  And now, what pulpits have we?  What news bureaus?  Perhaps churches, temples, mosques and synagogues will replace our newspapers, or provide a welcome and helpful parallel.  Daily devotions alongside local news, obituaries and crossword puzzles. 

After all, what is the purpose of knowledge?

Last week, three young people were gunned down five blocks from my office in the middle of the night outside a bar.  Few at our busy office got any news of it until a couple days ago.  Yet all we ever hear about—day in and day out—are the petty crimes of people in “the public eye”.  I, for one, am concerned exclusively with critically wounded teenagers a few blocks away.  That I wish to know about, and in great detail. That’s my “localism”.

Take gardening knowledge. Who’s doing what to whom, with whom and when?  And it better be either old or rare.  Who really cares?  Yet, how many tomatoes fruit on one plant or vine, on average?  How many pea pods off a single vine?  How many green beans?  How many bell peppers fruit off a single plant?  How many cukes off one plant?  Anyone ever notice how many seeds are contained in an average $3.00 packet of lettuce seed?  Last week at my local big-name supermarket, Boston lettuce was $1.75 per head, and it was a sorry looking thing.  I wanted to buy it out of pity.  (Also, for the first time since the early 1970s, the parking lot was almost empty on a weekend afternoon.)

Is the fact that a typical Boston lettuce seed packet contains 800 seeds relevant to today’s public debates about poverty, hunger and health?  How about a discussion of the importance of public transportation—heard much about buses and light rail on TV or radio in the midst of $4.00/gallon gas and the Big 3 bailout?  Not even the newspapers have had the time—or presence of mind—to bring it up. Forget about news websites as well.  They’re too busy competing with the newspapers. 

The folks working at Heronswood Nursery include these excellent employees headquartered at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA. On this 60-acre estate, we have planted over 10 acres of rare cultivars, including much of what we offer on-line and in the Heronswood Catalog. Also, these are the folks you will meet at our upcoming 2009 Open Days.

Hieu Bui is our number one seed propagator. Born in Vietnam, he now lives with his family in Philadelphia.

Norm Grigg is our landscaper. Born in the Virgin Islands, he lives with his family in Langhorne.

Dave Smicker is head of trials and gardens. A Pennsylvania native and graduate of Temple University’s horticulture program. Dave served as an intern at Fordhook Farm for over three years.

Jack Forbes is an assistant landscaper. He served in the US Army in Virginia from 1952 to 1953. He hunts and fishes and resides with his wife Jo in Doylestown, PA.

Linda Cassidy is a Bucks County native and one of Grace’s new assistants, after working for ten years at Fordhook when it was a bed and breakfast. She ably runs our test kitchens, contributing many recipes and helping to run our Open Days and scheduling visitors.

The handsome 8-year-old “Hurricane” Nathan Hale is the top dog at Fordhook. As a puppy he was chained outside and used as target practice by stone-throwing children at a gang house in North Philly, until an Air Force enlistee jumped the fence and rescued him. The next year, after this brave hero was given his orders to Afghanistan, he dropped Nathan off at a shelter in Doylestown. I bought him over the phone when I requested a black dog, my favorite kind. Mostly Lab with some Chow and Pit. Eats almost everything.

Five-year-old Sammy is a pure bred English Field Setter, a phenomenal bird dog, and fast as lightning. He easily runs down deer, for example. I got him from a group that rescues runts from litters at sportsmen’s clubs in the south. He is an affectionate “love dog”. Eats hardly anything.

Sammy has spotted an art critic.

Resting beneath the enormous Eastern sycamore.

Mary Kliwinski has taken all the great pictures that grace this blog. Self-taught and quite gifted, she also gardens part-time at Fordhook. She lives with her family in Doylestown.

Patty Kowski was our summer intern for the past two years and now works in Marketing at W. Atlee Burpee & Co. She assisted in every part of the trials, display gardens and Heronswood Open Days. She is a 2008 Penn State graduate with a degree in Agri-Business Management.

Bill Rein is our present intern, which hardly describes him. A graduate of Delaware Valley College, he became their arboretum manager in 2001. A horticulturist, Bill also writes very well as his guest blogs demonstrate.

Our Research Director, Grace Romero, was born and raised in the Philippines. A graduate of University of Michigan and Cornell University, she bred petunias and anemones for PanAmerican Seed while I was there in the 80s and 90s. She designed the Happiness Garden, as well as the many new Heronswood gardens at Fordhook.

Dan Tompkins is a part-time intern. He has helped in the last two year’s Opens. He is studying ornamental horticulture at Delaware Valley College and plans to attend graduate school.

Another holiday-time pint of view movie critique of “Quantum of Solace”, the latest James Bond turkey.

The clumsy and ostentatious title refers to our hero’s hard-won emotional release, fought out in a special digital effects studio.  This is James “Another time, another place” Bond?  Yes, and he’s worse than George Lazenby.  He is seriously disturbed.

On the plus side, the opening title sequence is surprisingly stunning, with a dynamic Mercator map motif and, mercifully, a few female figures whose design recalls 1950s era European art photography—not surprising from a middle-aged Swiss director.  This is a welcome relief from the direction of the playing card royalty featured in “Casino Royale”.  The hip-hop song is infectious but not memorable.  This Bond is based, for better and mostly worse, on scenery and special effects.

Another plus are the female leads.  Unlike “Casino Royale”, where, unbelievably, the women were less interesting than the men, “Quantum of Solace” sports a wonderful pair of ladies:  a sweetheart “girl next door” in Gemma Arterton and the high wattage bombshell, Olga Kurlyenko.  Arterton’s so charming that her dalliance with the sour Daniel Craig fails to convince.  Otherwise, she etches a distinct portrait in her couple minutes on screen, a good film actress.  Olga’s character possesses a tragic background, a bit of nuance and much enjoyable screen time.  An alpha female, she looks like a cross between Isabelle Adjani and former Bond vamp Sophie Marceau.  In the laughably fake fight scenes, she manages to project real toughness, a bit like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.  South America does indeed have a lot of green-eyed Russian beauties, so it’s inspired casting.  The remaining actors are either retreads from “Casino Royale” or insipid new characters.  “Quantum of Solace” hasn’t even a tiny fraction of the interest and sweep of “From Russia With Love” or “Thunderball”.  (For a refreshing contrast, watch 2006’s “Miami Vice”.)

What inspired the creators to change Bond from an intelligent and glamorous hero to a sullen, bitter, whining bore?  It’s startling.  Better to ask how it beat previous Bond opening box office records.  Yet it makes no sense:  Daniel Craig wears a new Turnbull & Asser wardrobe every few hours, but shows no sign of being a unique or special person.  Now he’s “human” and “normal”—like he’s in psychotherapy.  We’re supposed to relate to him as a “construct”.  Such tedium.  So, why then the flawless clothes tricks?  Can’t have it both ways; Sean Connery never did.

By these new personality-driven standards, Felix Leiter, played nicely by Jeffrey Wright, comes across as fascinating compared to Bond.  One wishes to know more about him.  Truly weird.  It occurred to me, while viewing, that Bond might be the true villain here, in an unconscious slip by the filmmakers.  Maybe Olga is the next Bond.  Maybe Felix?

The water shortage plot device is shallow.  Latin American military officers exploit helpless peasants.  The fake ecologist bad guy is played weakly and his role has none of the crazed brilliance given to magnificent actors like Michael Lonsdale, Lotte Lenya and Gert Frobe.  He isn’t even neurotic (maybe he’s the next Bond).  Strangely, too, they take a serious villain from “Casino Royale”—Giancarlo Giannini—and make him not just a good guy, but a bit of a punk.  What a waste of a great actor.  The Bolivian peasants are treated in a shockingly superficial way, as if they were in a Swissair travelogue.  The minimalist eco-resort in the climax is dull.  The bad guys have neither ideas nor imagination—they’re just mean; killing them doesn’t matter.  Speaking of devices, there are no gadgets.  “Anti-tech” means that the hero “moves more sleekly”,  as one reviewer praised it.  It means also “anti-good”.

Has the Bond franchise left the male fantasy playing field to Marvel and DC?  It seems so.  Unless you’re 10 years old, costumed super heroes have no credibility, much less interest.  They are completely unreal, which is their point.  The traditional Bond fan dislikes them—look at the ridiculous “Iron Man”.  Is the Bond fan now a young woman, dragged into the theater by Daniel Craig’s damaged allure?  Is the great 60s British spy hero—the “anti-Quixote”—all played out?  Perhaps Sean Connery was the exception to the rule—a pure man of action.  Yet, nowadays, one would think that after 9/11, in a world with a freakishly tall, cave dwelling terrorist, and hi-tech Somali pirates grabbing gigantic freighters, the Bond team would do better than a severely depressed sprinter in a beautiful suit chasing a short nature freak.

Perhaps it’s the running.  Men are running now.  Running away from the New Jerusalem (some of them) or toward it (a rare few) or just in circles, like around a track.  It’s the twilight of the baby boomers.  “Boomerdammerung”. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, James Bond isn’t dead, he just smells funny.