The Hortisexual

I took my wife and daughters to visit a public garden last week, without the usual moans from the back seat.

All it cost me were a few two-day amusement park passes, a couple nights at a four-star hotel, and enough candy to last till Halloween 2008.

Hershey Gardens is nestled high on a hillside overlooking the Ferris wheel and roller-coasters of HersheyPark, and the tall cocoa bean silos of the famous chocolate factory.

This isn’t some Disneyfied landscape appendaged to a theme park. Hershey Gardens is a bona fide horticultural destination.

What started as three and a half acres of roses planted by Milton and his Missus in 1937 has grown to a 23-acre pleasure garden.

Roses are still the centerpiece. There are 7,000 roses and 275 varieties. Mrs. Hershey’s original rose garden, dating to 1907, is also on the grounds.

Hershey Gardens is a sweet treat for garden lovers of every taste (you knew that was coming). There’s the seasonal display garden - - with it’s spring tulips, summer annuals or mums in fall; the rock garden, a new herb garden, the perennial garden (why don’t my plants look like that?!!); a Japanese garden, and many worthy tree specimens.

And here’s the secret to Dad getting quality time at Hershey Gardens: the Children’s Garden and Butterfly House. View image

The Children’s Garden includes 30 themed gardens, inter-active displays like the human sundial, and plenty of hiding places (remember as a kid how great it was to “disappear” underneath the foliage or boughs of an ancient tree). The favorite for my five-year old is the alphabet garden arrayed with annuals and perennials corresponding from A to Z.

Quick, can you come up with an X plant???

But the show-stopper for my girls is the Butterfly House. Step inside and you are literally swarmed by these winged works of art. The key to encouraging a butterfly to land on you is to wear a bright-colored hat or top - - and staying perfectly still, of course. Easy for my ‘tween; impossible for her chocolate-charged little sister.

Oh, and the best five bucks I spent was renting a “Discovery Backpack” at the visitors center. It contains enough fun for up to 10 kids, ages 5 to 12. The backpack includes a couple of butterfly nets, clear plastic jars for holding bugs, magnifying glasses, scavenger hunt maps, plant and critter ID guides, coloring and drawing sheets, and arts and crafts goodies. My daughters happily sat at a picnic table for the better part of an hour twisting bumble bees out of yellow and black pipe cleaners.

That Discovery Backpack bought me more time to enjoy the beauty and serenity of Hershey Gardens - - before being catapulted upside down on the SooperDooperLooper!

What a week.

All I did was swat at every need-it-now demand flying out of my cell phone and Inbox.

I awoke Saturday morning with a work hangover.

I pulled in the driveway on the return trip of my daily endorphin recharge ritual -- a 20 oz. Wawa hazelnut coffee and the newspaper - - just in time to catch a hummingbird kissing the lipstick red blossoms of a cardinal flower.

It hovered in mid-air on wings made invisible by their speed, a contradiction of motion and stillness.

Later, as I went about the patio, hose wand in hand to satisfy the unquenchable late–July thirst of container plantings, I observed a solitary droplet of water morph into a translucent glass bead in the cup of a newborn elephant ear. It was as delicate and perfectly round as anything a Steuben artisan could create. I lifted the leaf and watched with fascination as it rolled intact from side to side in defiance of its liquid temporariness.

Gardening is the pause button on the never-ending chase scene of my life called career and parenting (Have I mentioned I “commute” to my job in south Florida?).

These catch ‘em before they’re gone moments aren’t scheduled in Outlook Calendar. But the therapeutic value lasts for hours.

Yeah, that’s why I garden.