Word: garden
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Only the most disciplined can resist the urge for better equipment, new hybrids, the latest indestructible orchid. Tools that were once an extension of arm and soul are now computer driven and high tech. Smith & Hawken, purveyor of top-drawer English garden tools, has grown from two guys selling ! tools nine years ago out of a California warehouse to a $30 million business...
Once the obsession takes hold, it becomes clear that while gardening may be many things for many people, dirt cheap it ain't. Among the quickest ways to run through a fortune is to approach the garden with the eye of a connoisseur. "Trees are my 87th collection," admits Louis Meizel, who, with his wife Susan, owns a SoHo art gallery and a 3 1/2-acre Long Island farm. "As with all our collections, our goal is to put together the best of each kind in the world." They have spent about $100,000 thus far, in part because they...
...those who are aghast at how much money their gardens can absorb, there is some consolation in thinking of it as an investment. "One thing this generation has discovered," says Rodger Duer, vice president of the mammoth Monrovia nurseries in California and Oregon, "is that a nice garden helps sell a house." Considerable seed money has been directed into landscaping, roughly $3 billion last year, $745 million more than the year before. Such expenditures, by some estimates, can boost the value of real estate by 7% to 15%. Young anglophiles hope that a wanton English garden with piles...
Unfortunately, such tastes often exceed what time allows, thereby ensuring that nurseries and garden-supply stores will be well stocked with shortcuts. Since in most cases a silky lawn is out of the question, there is a burgeoning market for "meadows in a can," which promise a vast, sweet meadow right out of a picture book. This illusion too does not come cheap: a 4-oz. can of Rocky Mountain wildflower seed from Smith & Hawken goes...
There is such a thing as an instant garden, more's the pity, but one pays a price for it. "Within the past three years or so," observes Larry Shapira, a horticulturist and consultant at Merrifield Garden Center outside Washington, "people have started coming in who just don't want to wait for smaller plants to become big ones. They want to go to the garden center in the morning, pick up the plant, drive the thing home, plant it, and have a drink under it that evening...