Saturday, October 23, 2004
A friendly photography competition is also being continued.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When Elgin Smith started gardening more than 20 years ago, he hadn't planned on his hobby's creating not only award-winning plants but also a family tradition that has spanned four generations.
"My dad and I [gardened] together for quite a while," says Judy Schuck, Smith's daughter. "And my daughter, in working with us, got more and more involved. It brings a closeness when you're working together. It's rewarding to see the results."
Considering retirement from a career as a commercial photographer in the 1980s, Smith started planting roses in the front yard of his home. Before long, plants and flowers spilled into the home's side and back yards, and as the landscape bloomed, other family members started lending a hand, including Smith's wife, Dorothy, their daughter, granddaughter and, eventually, great-grandchildren.
Pulling the family into gardening was seamless, since the Smiths' daughter lived across the street. Schuck worked with her father in maintaining the landscape, while her mother offered ideas for plants. Eventually Smith recruited his granddaughter, Sherra Schuck, and her children, son, Mikael, 11, and daughter, Nicki, 3.
Landscaping ideas
Several years ago, Smith saw a water wheel and gristmill in a fellow photographer's back yard and decided to do the same in his garden.
"He'd always had an interest in gristmills and loved to photograph them," Judy Schuck says. "He got a plan and had a fellow come out and build a shed and water pond."
The water feature opened up other landscaping ideas; Smith put in shade plants on one side of the house and sun-loving perennials on the other.
When the family became focused on Smith's declining health, the water element fell into disrepair; Smith died last year at age 89. But this year, the family worked on returning the water feature to its former glory.
Schuck says the family will keep her father's garden going for her mother. "We'll keep up her yard. I love to get out and garden. My garden's gone by the wayside because I've spent more time helping keep his up."
Once Smith got his daughter hooked on gardening, he persuaded her to help with the Gardeners of America Overland Park's annual plant sale, and before she knew it, she'd joined the club, became a member of the board of directors and served as president a couple of years.
She heads up the national Gardeners of America organization's photography and calendar committees. In the contest, members submit photos of their gardens, landscapes, nature and blooms.
"Dad was a regular in the national Gardeners of America's annual photography competition," Schuck says. "He'd had roses for years, and photographing the blooms was another hobby of his."
Friendly contest
Like her father, Schuck is a photographer, and he encouraged her to enter the annual photo contest as he did, thus creating another family tradition.
"For many years, it became a big competition each year to see who'd get a slide in the calendar. My daughter is competing now," Schuck says. "For several years, I've had a picture in the calendar. This year, I don't have any, but she does."
Smith won several awards from the national gardening organization for his garden photography.
Schuck, and her daughter, Sherra Schuck, can see Smith's influence in their own gardens, the result of working by his side in his garden.
"I mostly started with Grandpa," says Sherra Schuck, who considers herself an adventurous gardening novice. "He had such a wonderful garden throughout his entire yard. I'd been helping a lot with that and I just kept going." She maintains a container garden while her mother's home garden is filled with shade-loving plants, chiefly hostas.
And now the Schucks are grooming the fourth generation to join in the family's gardening hobby. Mikael has joined the Overland Park Gardeners of America as a junior member. And, Sherra Schuck says, her young daughter is always eager to work in the yard.
"There aren't a lot of kids in the [local] organization, but they do have a junior membership," says Mikael's grandmother.
Junior members spend time in the organization learning about horticulture and cultivating an interest in gardening, she says.
Passing it on
The 11-year-old helps out at the club's plant sale and in the garden enjoys trimming the bushes and pulling weeds. "I'd dig the holes, and Mikael would put the bulbs in and cover them up," Schuck says.
Sherra Schuck home-schools her son, and horticulture plays a part in the curriculum.
"I'm teaching them the importance of nature," she says. She wants her children to know "how fun it can be to get out there and get dirty and how rewarding it is to be able to nurture something and give it life."
She says it's most rewarding to children when they're tending a fast-growing plant. "They think it's neat, and you can express the importance of it after they're hooked."
And "hooked" is what the Smith-Schuck clan is, now that everyone has a hand in Grandpa Elgin's hobby.