Did I buy Heronswood?

Burpee expects to reap profit on Heronswood
Gardeners look for seed money for $11 million tract
By GORDY HOLT P-I REPORTER
            A group of Northwest garden lovers hoping
to buy and save the famed 7-acre garden known as
Heronswood got a taste of sticker shock Thursday when
they learned what the owners are asking.
            The Pennsylvania-based Burpee seed company
said it wants $11 million for the property near
Kingston that it closed nine weeks ago when it shut
down the world-famed Heronswood Nursery.
            In a telephone interview, Hans Miller,
vice president and chief financial officer of W. Atlee
Burpee & Co., revealed the price and said Coldwell
Banker is handling the sale.  But that's not what the
would-be rescuers believe they'll have to pay.
            "I think it's fair to say that's a lot of
money," said Lee Neff of Seattle, chairwoman of the
Northwest group's fledgling board of directors. "I
just don't think that's what it will sell for. That's
not the figure that would occur to us, but we'll see
what happens," added Neff, who edits the Arboretum
Foundation bulletin.
            Board member Linda Cochran of Bainbridge
Island agreed.  "Lee has it about right," she said.
"It seems a bit high. But I'm sure that's their
starting point."  Cochran said if the purchase attempt
is successful, Heronswood would be turned into an
educational and research center, saving the exotic
plants that made it such a worldwide hit.
            Heronswood was created 19 years ago by Dan
Hinkley and Robert Jones, who sold it to Burpee for $4
million six years ago amid promises from company
executives of a long life. The pair later rejected
Burpee's buy-back price of $2 million.
            But that was then.  In late May, citing a
change in business philosophy, Burpee let the
Heronswood staff go and locked the front gate after
moving the research facility and many of the garden's
exotic plants to its headquarters in Pennsylvania.
            Along with them went the Heronswood label,
but company officials said they had no immediate plan
to open a Heronswood Nursery in Pennsylvania, where
the company already has a 50-acre nursery at Willow
Hill and a similar-size test and display garden at
Fordhook Farm in Doylestown.
The move sent a shock wave through the gardening
community that reached around the world, as much
because of Hinkley's carefully contrived plant catalog
as because of its reputation as a special place for
special plants.
Hinkley was a collector who carried out his plant
hunting globally and recorded many of his adventures
in the catalog. His garden and its propagation
facilities reflected them, too.
            E-mails responding to the Seattle P-I's
story on the closure came from around the world. 
"Americans are certainly not the only people deeply
shocked at the closure of Heronswood nursery," wrote
Lesley Cox of New Zealand. "It has never been my good
fortune to visit the nursery, but I have relied
heavily on their wonderful plants, imported to New
Zealand over some years. I truly hate big,
multinational companies whose only raison d'etre is
profit."
            With the garden's closure also came local
expressions of hope that a sugar daddy might be found
to save it.
That hope continues.  "We're still in the process of
organizing as a legal not-for-profit entity and have
not yet raised any money," Cochran said. "But we are
forming a board of directors, and we have contacted
Burpee about our intent."
            The asking price was referred to only
tangentially in that earlier conversation, she said,
adding that she was warned it would be "an expensive
piece of property."  "But the good thing," she said,
"is that (Burpee) hasn't said they won't deal with us,
and we view that as a good sign."
So does Bill Noble, with reservations.
Noble is director of preservation projects for The
Garden Conservancy, a national organization that helps
save special-but-threatened gardens across the
country. The Chase Garden in Orting credits its
existence to the conservancy, for example.
            But first things first, Noble said
Thursday from New York.
            While saving Heronswood as a public
resource is a worthwhile goal, he said, "I want to
make clear what I've already told Linda, and that is,
the conservancy doesn't have money to invest in (the
project), but before we do throw any support at all
behind it, we will need to see their proposal, their
mission and vision statements, and we'll need to get
some information about the financing."
            Moreover, he said, the conservancy will
want to know if the money raised will be enough not
just to buy the garden but to operate it and endow its
future.  "So often in these things," Noble said, "it's
the endowment piece that is missing.
            "I'm quite aware that there are a number
of public gardens in the Puget Sound area that are in
positions where they have to raise money to support
themselves. So you always want to ask, is there room
for one more?"
 
P-I reporter Gordy Holt can be reached at 206-448-8356
or gordyholt@seattlepi.com.
) 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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