Garden Centers

Childhood gardening

This morning I stepped into the garage to put aside some stuff for recycling, and the odor of potting soil, bird seed and fertilizer zapped me like a time machine, transporting me in a whirl of sensory memories back to childhood treks to the garden center. 


Sundays during my childhood were dedicated to two things: God and family. At 10 a.m. my mom, grandma, and the five of us would go to Mass (my dad went to an earlier Mass to usher).  After Mass, we'd drive to the bakery and buy fresh, hot cinnamon bread and a cake for Sunday dinner. Mom would make a big roast of some sort for 1 p.m. Sunday "dinner" and the eight of us would have a leisurely midday Sunday feast.

After midday dinner, if relatives were expected for a visit, they would arrive sometime around 2:30 and stay until about 4:30.  If not, the family went on an outing - to the duck pond to feed the ducks and play, to see Christmas lights or fall foliage, to buy pumpkins and apple cider in October, or during the winter, to visit one of the local garden centers.

The greenhouses at Gardeners Village or Garden World were like tropical paradises on a cold snowy winter day. The moist, green smell delights me now as it delighted me then.  I'd run from table to table, touching cactus spines, sniffing orchids that smelled like chocolate, staring at pots and garden gloves.

Gardeners Village had a pet department and my parents knew that I'd be safely entertained there. Pepper the Parot lived in a big cage in the middle. He was rumored to be old - very old - close to 40.  Pepper could say "Hello" and lots of other funny things.  I'd often leave on these Sunday trips with a new goldfish for the family's fish tank.

My dad loved garden centers and spent happy hours browsing the shelves. He loved to try the most modern chemicals, too.  That's where he and I differ - he never met a chemical fertilizer or pesticide he didn't love, and I've never met one that didn't give me the creeps!

From the seed packets arriving in late January to the rows of big plastic Nativity scene characters and toy Soldiers in December, these trips instilled a love for garden centers in me that eventually led me in my twenties to work at one of the major ones on Long Island and today still transports me back in time.

I have a big plastic turkey window decorations that my mom bought for me when I was six years old on one of those garden center jaunts. Tom Turkey, as my husband calls him, is ugly; he smells funny, like burning plastic wires, when the sun strikes his bumpy plastic chips too long. He's missing his feet because sometimes in my childhood I decided to operate on him and remove them. But I don't care. Just seeing him hanging in my window at Thanksgiving is enough to make me smile and remember those long-ago trips to the garden center.

My friends also know me so well that guess what we have planned for my springtime birthday?

You guessed it; a day trip to Lynchburg's garden centers.

Garden center memories....do you love browsing through them too?

(Today's picture shows me on the right (the tall one) and my best friend, Annemarie Bayer, holding pansy plants. We're around 8 or 9 years old here)