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Flowers
and Stuff Many people have asked
me over the years how Di and I got started in this business. And that can
only be answered in one way: Lillian Maroushek. Diane and I met Lillian
almost twenty years ago. We had moved into our present house in 1985 and
had a driveway that ran parallel to, and about thirty inches from our kitchen
door. It then ran between our carriage house and the big white pine and
out through the woods to Hope Street. Now the benefit of
having a driveway thirty inches from your back door is that in the summertime,
our neighbors could drive up and without getting out of their car carry on a
conversation with us. We could be eating breakfast, turn around and there
they’d be: instant friends. We’d exchange pleasantries, and then ask
them if they wanted to come in. Some would but most would politely decline
and say, “I’m fine, right here.” Then we’d talk between kitchen
and car for another twenty minutes or so while doing our dishes and other
kitchen chores. Now the downside to this
situation was that we wanted a backyard off our kitchen, not a driveway.
Once we started a family, we imagined our kids crossing traffic to get to our
backyard. Danger seemed imminent. Ultimately, we decided to redirect
our driveway to circle around our grand, old white pine and exit through the
woods. Unfortunately, that
fall, a friend drove into our yard; right down the old driveway that we had just
planted in fresh sod. That’s where Lillian came into the picture.
We needed a garden! (We needed a roadblock…) Up to that point, Di and
I had always had a big vegetable garden. Di would give me a hard time
because, when we were first married, I liked to start the vegetables in the
basement from seed and then plant them out. I’d water and weed them.
A lot. And then, sometime during the summer I’d burn out with the
watering and weeding and quit. “OK, that’s enough of that, this
isn’t fun anymore.” That would drive her nuts. “Most people
enjoy the harvesting of vegetables…” she’d mutter. (Diane says she
has never muttered…) Of course, every year I’d get a little smarter
about the weeding and it wasn’t too many years before I could make a whole
season of it. She was quite proud of me. Life was good. But
now we needed a different kind of garden, shrubs and trees and flowers and
stuff. Well, someone told us
about a woman in Hastings, said she sold this kind of stuff out of her yard.
Her name was Lillian Maroushek. Di went over there in the spring and
bought a bunch of plants and we put them in and that was that. Only she
kept talking about ‘Lillian’. That I should go see her gardens.
That I’d really like them, and…I’d really like her. At the time, I don’t
think Di realized I was a vegetable gardener. Which means she would have
to be the ‘non-vegetable’ gardener. You know, flowers and stuff.
Also, I was pretty sure she never took the class, “Boys Do This & Girls Do
That & Never the Twain Shall Meet,” that I took in 3rd or 4th grade at
McCahill School. In other words, boys do cars and football and vegetable
gardening (like tomatoes and onions)…(OK, technically, vegetable plants do
flower; but the main point is to ‘harvest’; it’s man’s inner connection
to giving his children strong bones and good teeth…) and girls do cooking,
sewing…and flowers. So a year went by, and
the next spring Di started talking about Lillian again---it was a pretty cool
place and I would really like it. So, in a moment of complete delirium, I
finally gave in and one day we went over to see Lillian. As we drove up I
could see her white house, her small garage, the grass on the boulevard, and
beyond that nothing but plants. I didn’t have a clue as to what most of
those plants were. Her yard was the size of a city lot and it was covered
with the coolest, strangest, most wonderfully unique plants I had ever seen.
I was hooked. I was stunned that on
that small space there was so much plant diversity. For Lillian’s garden
is a true collectors’ garden. She never met a plant she didn’t like.
Lillian wants to grow---or try to grow---every plant she’s ever read about.
Some people like a well-designed garden and can appreciate the form and texture
and the interplay of plants in a completely naturalistic setting… But
not to a collector. A collector is motivated by growing. Anything
and everything. To a collector, space is
a premium. Because if you’re going to grow just about everything that
has ever lived on this planet in one city lot---you better be judicious about
space. No three plants of the same variety in a perfect triangle there.
That’s what I liked about Lillian: she wanted to grow everything. I
wanted to know why and if she could do it. So Di and I helped
Lillian out over the next couple of years. Every Wednesday night in the
summer. We’d work in the early evening until dark. We potted,
divided, moved plants and weeded. All the time asking questions: “How
does this grow? Why? When does this bloom?” And as we left,
Lillian always cheerfully gave us extras of this and that. We’d go home
and plant ‘this and that’, then come back the next week and try to find out
what we had just put in the ground. It was a great way to learn and she
was as kind and helpful as she could be. She encouraged us to get into the
business. At first we didn’t even give it a thought. But slowly we
started to talk about it. In 1995, thanks to Lillian, we opened Funkie
Gardens. Over the years we have
slowly grown and offered a unique variety of perennials, trees, and shrubs.
You know, flowers and stuff. We got hooked. We’ve made plenty of
mistakes, laughed often, met an amazing number of wonderful people, and
thoroughly enjoyed the ride. So to answer the question, “How did we get started?” we always start with Lillian. We learned from an amazing woman who gave us plants, her time, her encouragement and her love of growing things. As my brother, Andrew likes to say, “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” I’m starting to believe him. |
Funkie Gardens opens for
the season April 23, and our Woodland Open House will be the weekend of May 3 &
4. Mon. and Tues.: 9 am - 5 pm Contact Us: 618 Pearl St.
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