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 […]
“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 […]
Photo by Dean Fosdick This is the study where our founder, W. Atlee Burpee, wrote the Burpee annual seed and plant catalogues from 1889, when he bought Fordhook Farm and moved his family up from Philadelphia, until his passing away in 1915. From 1875 to 1888, he wrote them in his small office in the […]
By Lois Burpee Eight years of boarding school and college menus, and four years of stretching the dollar-a-day budget, while sharing an apartment with a sister or friend in the depression years, were a culinary vacuum, with one exception. While at Wellesley College, I was introduced to Chinese food. A group of students who had […]
By Lois Burpee “How did you, the wife of David Burpee, become interested in vegetables?” is a question frequently asked me—as though I had become a traitor to my husband and his passion for flowers. I am expected to be a flower expert, especially of marigolds, not vegetables. “I just did” is hardly a satisfactory […]
I served as President of The American Horticultural Society for four years, 1990 to 1993. For the first half of its existence the AHS headquartered in a series of offices in DC, including a second floor walk up over a Chinese restaurant. When I joined in 1989, it occupied River Farm, a spectacular 27-acre estate […]
We held the July 12 Open House at Heronswood’s new gardens in Doylestown, PA, welcoming over 430 people from across the northeast and mid-Atlantic states. We conducted seven garden tours, sold over a thousand rare plants and gave away a young hydrangea to the first 250 guests. It was a great day, though very hot. […]
Company towns are strange holdovers from the middle ages. In my mom’s hometown of Ware Shoals, the bank, church, clothing store, housing and, of course, work—all were owned by the textile mill. Money didn’t matter—whatever the company paid out, it got back in profits and rents. Step out of line and you better move along. […]
Recently, on a lovely Saturday, I drove up to New York City to see the site where my grandfather, Jacob, worked in a nursery in Queens. He had just moved from Cincinnati, where he’d finished an 1890s era, “live-in” apprenticeship in his early teens. Then he spent a few years in rural western Long Island, outside the town of Flushing, known for its many German immigrants and nurseries, as well…
Among the earliest gardeners in America are the Irish who traditionally plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day, often in the cold and blowing wind. Many Americans know that the failure of the potato crop caused an exodus of Irish natives to the United States. The subsequent contributions of the Irish Americans and their descendents range […]
