Summer self-loathing was triggered weeks ago by kinked hoses and endless swearing. The heat and drought were beating me down. Crabgrass and broadleaf plantains couldn’t care less. Ariel, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, was right. “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

It’s not unusual to feel a garden’s burden by mid-late Summer in Kentucky. Sub-tropical heat and humidity dominate. I feel like I am pouring iron ore into a smelting furnace every day. We had less than an inch of rain for two months, while farm fields and pastures, within thirty miles, looked like the Promised Land.

Georgia nurseryman and breeder Bobby Saul of ItSaul Plants, during a prolonged drought, once said, “Even the trout have ticks.”

What could I do?

Rose and I ran away to Asheville, and the Blue Ridge mountains, for the 40th anniversary symposium of the Perennial Plant Association (PPA).

I hoped if I ignored the garden I would be absolved of my sins and rewarded with rain while we were away.

Fireside chat with Richard Nixon and Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1974. Wikimedia Commons photo. Touched up with a bouquet of Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’.

It was my honor, on the first day of the symposium, to be interviewed, in what was billed as a fireside chat, by PPA President Richard Hawke about 40 years of the PPA, Plants and People.

I was 33 years old in 1984 and had started Holbrook Farm and Nursery three years before. I was filled with the absolute confidence of ignorance that I could make a go of a nursery. Holbrook Farm was 18 miles south of Asheville near Fletcher, NC.

The first “official” PPA meeting had spun off from a gathering of several hundred perennial growers in 1983. I was a greenhorn among pros. In those days it was not uncommon for nurseries to grow most, or all, of their inventory. I absorbed every morsel of propagation advice from veterans like Dick Simon, Andre Viette, Pierre Bennerup, and Dave Schultz.

Perennial signatories from the 1983 pre-PPA meeting.. The enthusiasm from this meeting sparked the formation of the PPA The first official PPA followed the next year.

By the end of the two-day gathering there was overwhelming interest in keeping the group’s momentum going. We met “officially” in Columbus again the next year, joined by U.S. and Canadian garden designers, representatives from arboreta and botanic gardens, retailers, educators, and writers who added a glow to a growing interest in perennials. In the next few years, attendees began arriving from Europe and around the world.

Tent revival and trepidation

Early PPA meetings felt like a charismatic tent revival. We found inspiration to spread the holy word, alongside trepidation. Outside the tent, we weren’t sure if it was smart to share the truth about biblical droughts and the dozens of other ways a garden can go under.

John Friel, past PPA President and retired Marketing Manager with Emerald Coast Nursery, wrote an entertaining history of the PPA for this year’s anniversary symposium.

Here’s a snippet.

Perennials were a nebulous, poorly understood category—the bastard offspring of the greenhouse and tree and shrub nursery— a child of two worlds comfortable in neither.

Okay, there were self-esteem problems.

Years before alternative facts became habit forming, we bent the truth on a plan for backyard gardens from sea to shining sea,

A marketing strategy straight off a used car lot was hatched in conference corridors and in the bar.

The embodiment of the perfect no-maintenance garden. J.C. Raulston photo.

My garden fantasy with perennials grown from Jelitto Perennial Seeds.

Plant perennials once and forget about them

If we had been honest, we might have recommended a psychological exam for gardening novitiates.

“How much time would you like to spend in your perennial border in April, when skies are blue, overnight rains are gentle and daytime the temperature is delightful?”  It’s a trick question. The answer is almost always: “As much time as possible.”

Flip the question: “How much time to do you want to spend weeding your perennials in a summer heat dome?” Answer: “As little as possible.”

We didn’t dare say the first years of a gardener’s life might feel like boot camp. Many of us, in the early PPA days, worried that our tag line—They don’t call them perennials for nothing— would be called out.

To everyone’s surprise, homeowners adapted.

They killed plants and didn’t give up.

You are hereby granted license to kill a few plants, but get over it when you do.

Hail Britannia, Britannia ruled the garden world

English gardens were, and still are, the envy of many, although growing conditions throughout most of North America don’t mimic West Sussex. Nevertheless, a year (1979) as an International Trainee at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew sealed my enduring garden romance. Beth Chatto, Tony Hall, Will Ingwersen, Christopher Lloyd, and Russell Page, plus Kew interns and students, were my muses.

I had to adapt my nursery plant palate very quickly to a southern Appalachian climate. Dionysias, alpine gentians, and tight buns of saxifragas grew so beautifully at Kew, and at Will Ingwersen’s Birch Farm Nursery near East Grinstead, where I worked for three months. I could germinate a few of them in North Carolina, but they never reached the transplant stage.

My focus became hardy perennials.

There is no such thing as a bad Joe-Pye weed.

I imported a Joe-Pye weed from England in the mid-1980s that didn’t look a dime different from others growing along roadsides in Western North Carolina. Maybe there was a secret English polish I hadn’t noticed. I mentioned the discrepancy to the English-born Pam Harper, who gardened in Seaford, Virginia. The author and photographer insisted it must be a better Joe-Pye weed. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s an English Joe-Pye weed,” she assured me.

The English Joe-Pye weed opened the door to other native plants long ignored.

“Well, then if they grow Joe-Pye weed in England, we should too.”

Ironweeds, wild asters, goldenrods, and native grasses followed suit.

Other design influences

At the Baltimore meeting in 1987 we visited Wolfgang Oehme and Jim van Sweden’s landscape design of Washington’s Federal Reserve Building. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm,’ on a hillside that turned the tables on conventional mixed plantings with threes of this and five of that. ‘Goldsturm’ was soon seen everywhere.

Kurt Bluemel inspects Jelitto seed production of Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm, at his nursery in 1992. Georg Uebelhart photo

Kurt Bluemel and Wolfgang Oehme

Kurt Bluemel and Oehme were German immigrants whose paths crossed in Maryland. Oehme’s childhood, and his familiarity with the “naturalistic” work of Karl Foerster, inspired his future. Bluemel supplied hundreds of thousands of perennials and grasses for Oehme and van Sweden projects.

Bluemel’s nursery was an incubator of future talent. Ed Snodgrass, the foremost purveyor of green roof plants and owner of Emory Knoll Farms, managed the nursery in 1987. He worked with an all-star crew: Georg Uebelhart (now the owner of Jelitto Perennial Seeds) Cassian Schmidt (German garden designer) and Janet Draper (lead gardener for the Smithsonian’s Mary Livingstone’s Ripley Garden).

PPA Trivia night with Janet Draper. Marianne Williburn photo.

That same year I traveled to Germany with a group of nurserymen that became known as the Ratzeptuz Gang, named after a vile tasting ginger flavored schnapps. We have traveled together on trips to Argentina, Holland, England, the Rockies, and even the Smokey Mountains. A camaraderie was forged by cold beer, medium rare steaks, and herbaceous plants—wild and domesticated. It was wonderful last week to see Pierre Bennerup, Dave Schultz, and Steve Still in Asheville. Steve was the founding Director of the PPA, and a tribute for his foresight and accomplishments were made at last week’s symposium.

The Ratzeputz Gang, high in the Colorado Rockies: (L-R): Kirk Alexander, Steve Still, Georg Uebelhart, Dave Schultz, Pierre Bennerup and Kurt Bluemel.

Perennial gardening evolved

Geometric English borders in North America gave up ground to more natural-looking gardens.

Piet Oudolf, whose garden career had been influenced by Dutch designers Mien Ruys and Henk Gerritsen, made a mark on New York’s High Line in the early 2000s.

Oudolf soon met Wisconsin nurseryman Roy Diblik, who showed him local prairies that influenced the Lurie Garden design in Chicago.

Thomas Rainer and his Phyto associates are turning tables, also. So are Pat Cullina and Rebecca McMackin. 

Back on the farm

“Find out what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all…For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.” The poet and novelist, Charles Bukowski was consumed by alcohol; I was consumed by work.

I found what I loved but gave up Holbrook Farm and Nursery in 1995. The business was marginal, even with thousands of devoted customers. I occasionally hear from some today. I visited two of my favorite Asheville customers, Heather Spencer and Charles Murray, last week. Plants brought us together and kept us together.

In the Asheville garden of Charles Murray and Heather Spencer. Yucca rostrata in the background. Heather is holding a huge leaf from an empress tree, Paulownia tomentosa in the background.. The tree is cut to the ground every year in late winter or early spring. The ritual produces enormous leaves.

The nursery could have lived on, or it might have killed me, but I was older, wiser and tired. Fifteen years was a good run. I moved back to Louisville and married Rose Cooper, or Rose Bush if you like.

Molly Bush at Holbrook Farm with Nell and Bell in 1992.

I initially sold the small nursery house to Jeremias and Alicia Ramirez in 1996, and they bought the remaining acreage in 2012. I have visited the farm many times over the years. Jeremias was a devoted and hardworking Holbrook colleague and friend.

In the Fletcher, North Carolina garden of Alicia and Jeremias Ramirez

Rose and I stopped by, before the symposium, on Jeremias’s 62nd birthday. There is little trace of the nursery, but the garden is intact and not as fussy looking as it was when I gardened there. The place looked beautiful. (Jeremias and Alicia have spent half their lives on the farm.) Through the years Jeremias has planted over 600 trees. Oaks were grown from acorns he collected from trees at his workplace. Squirrels now sow the farm’s acorns. Goats were new on this visit. So was an astounding patch of Mexican heirloom corn, twelve-feet tall, for the goats and chickens.

Jeremias and I wondered who had loved the farm more. It was a toss-up.

Jeremias Ramirez and his first American bicycle, his only means of transportation when he arrived from Guatemala as a political refugee in 1987.

My love of the PPA didn’t end here

I went to work for Jelitto Perennial Seeds as their first North American Manager. My hiring was a result of the PPA. I met Klaus Jelitto in 1987 when he came to his first PPA. Talk about good luck. I loved the company, and they didn’t kill me. I continued going to PPA meetings.

Jelitto’s current owner Georg Uebelhart, whom I met as a young aspiring seed guy in 1987, working for Kurt Bluemel, remains a dear friend. And among many other great hires over the years, including some very talented folks at Holbrook Farm, Mary Vaananen, came to work with me at Jelitto. I knew I could count on someone smart with practical know-how, but as a bonus, Mary, who is an artist and writer, had extra sensory talents and was a terrific hands-on gardener and good company to boot.

Georg Uebelhart and Ed Snodgrass at Kurt Bluemel’s in 1987

We are not so different

The Asheville PPA was a homecoming. The warmth, generosity, and curiosity were evident. Young attendees were welcomed warmly.

PPA members may differ temperamentally and philosophically, but they are united dynamically with their big-tent love of perennials and gardens.

Forty years passed in the blink of an eye.

I loved being together again with my tribe.

The Ranters Trivia team with emcee, Scott Beuerlein: Marianne Willburn, Ranter Emeritus Carol Reese and possible future guest ranter Kyra Back. We finished third, but we’ll be back for gold next year.

On the way home

Fearsome black clouds loomed straight ahead as we passed through Danville, KY, last Thursday evening, thirty miles short of Salvisa. A radio warning told us to seek cover immediately. A severe storm with 60 mph winds was imminent. We pulled into a church parking lot and asked, and were given, safe sanctuary with two other couples. Strangers at first and friends an hour later as the storm passed.

We arrived home and found a few small, downed branches and two inches in the rain gauge.

The garden was happy.

I was happy, too.

Very happy.