family homestead with their Golden Retriever, Babs.
While exploring my newfound hobby of gardening, I met Steve and asked him out. My interest in him at this point was based solely on his good looks and a friend’s suggestion that he was a good one. Little did I know the treasure I would find in both him and his garden.
During our first dinner date, it didn’t take long for our conversation to come around to gardening. Living as I was under a deep canopy of oak trees, my little experience had been strictly in shade gardening. Turned out he was quite the vegetable grower. So after our second lunch date, we went by his house to see what he was growing.
Eureka! His little spot of paradise was sitting right smack dab in full sun! I mean no shade in sight – to someone like me who had been searching for a ray of sunshine in her garden, this was incredible. His home was definitely a bachelor’s pad, but the garden, oh my goodness – paradise. Most of the property was in beautiful vegetable garden, and there were many plantings around that his grandmother and other family members had started over the years. I just wanted to explore and see what was growing.
Just imagine discovering this spot while living in a city of 180,000 that had little if any undeveloped open land. Steve’s home had belonged to his grandparents. It was one of the homes built in the 1930s in what is known as “The Colony” in the Mennonite community located in Newport News, Virginia. The bungalow-type house sat on one and a quarter acres adjoining a 40-acre horse boarding farm. The neighboring fields make this property feel as though you are in the country even though you are in the middle of the city – a treasure in itself.
When I came on the scene, Steve and his family had a large vegetable garden to feed the family in season and for freezing and canning for out-of-season. Grandma Ziegler had planted many hydrangeas, daffodils and camellias on the property over the years. Grandpa Ziegler left his mark also with many fig and pecan trees, grape vines and, most importantly, his years of adding leaf mold to the gardens.
I now grow the flowers of my dreams because of all the sunshine in Steve’s gardens.
Steve had been living in this place as a bachelor for many years before I came along. In addition to gardening, he had an interest in motorcycles. The house apparently was perfect for re-building a 1968 Harley Davidson Chopper in the living room! So glad I missed this. The stories this house could tell: from the babies born to the Brunk family who built the home in the ‘30s to Harleys roaring up the front steps in the ‘80s – thank goodness walls can’t talk!
Steve and I hadn’t been dating long when I popped the question: “May I do a little gardening at your place?” I just couldn’t resist all that sunshine. I could grow… well, I wasn’t even sure what I could grow yet, but I was ready to try. He happily replied yes.
So I planted some flowers that I had never before been able to grow. At this point, I just fell in love with the whole gardening life and the one who introduced me to it.
Around here, the story goes that I married Steve for his gardening dowry. Of course, that isn’t true! I married Steve because the same things make his heart race as mine: God, family and the love of a garden. However, he did come with a couple of Troy-Bilt tillers, composted land, lots of old hydrangeas, and a dump truck to boot!
Steve and I married in 1995. We had two complete households and gardens. We would ultimately live in his home; however, his place as previously described was a bit of a man cave, so renovations were in order.
We began by packing his house, so he could make the move into my house after the wedding. Next, his house was gutted. The house was taken down to the studs and everything replaced. Keeping it in our regular family style, my brother was the builder and he made the job as painless as possible. The icing on the cake was that my dad custom-made all the trim in the house to replace what was there. Eighteen months later we moved in.
I dug the entire shade garden from my house and brought it with us.
My relocated shade garden that now lives under the tulip magnolia tree that Steve’s grandparents planted many years ago. Pictured: hellebores, primroses, bleeding hearts, and cyclamen.
The first year in the Ziegler homestead, I continued the tradition of large vegetable gardens filled with tomatoes, beans, sweet corn, peas, onions, potatoes and all the classics for good eating and storing up. Steve loves growing sweet corn, just like his grandfather did. They loved sharing it with friends and neighbors as much as eating it. I was also busy with projects, putting my own touch on the landscape around our new home, including planting my first 10-foot row of zinnias beside the vegetable garden.
During this time, my grandmother suffered a massive stroke. I was so proud of those zinnias that one day I picked several and took them along on my weekly visit to see her. What a fuss these garden flowers created! I entered the front doors of the nursing home carrying about two dozen zinnias and started down the hall. Folks who had never taken notice before now approached me, saying, “My mother grew those!” or “Zinnias! I had those in my garden.” It was one of those moments that makes your heart swell.
Zinnias are the flower that started it all for me and brought memories to the surface for so many.
By the time I made it to my grandmother’s room all the way at the very end of the hall I had a pack of flower garden lovers following me. So began my weekly harvest of zinnias to take on my visit, along with pint mason jars to fill and place on the dining tables for everyone to enjoy as they reminisced.
The experience of harvesting that single row of flowers to take to the nursing home primed me for what was to come. A “big idea” was starting to form in my gardener’s brain.
During the winter of 1997, I discovered the book The Flower Farmer, by Lynn Byczynski. As I began reading this book, everything started falling into place. I was finally in a position that I could explore another career. I had that garden dowry of the necessary equipment, land, even many plants, such as hydrangeas, lily of the valley and peonies, that would complement what I would grow. Steve encouraged me to tackle this full-force. He loved the idea that I might “work the land” as my career, so he was onboard from the get-go.
The blooms from the old hydrangeas Steve’s grandmother planted gave my new business venture exactly what it needed – luscious blooms with little effort on my part.
After much head-scratching and nail-biting, I was excited and ready to get started. But it was late summer – what to do? So I hit the books again
