Ep 202. Pansies Bring Vicki Johnson's Garden Start

Mary Stone shares a heartwarming story from her dear friend Vicki Johnson, a garden writer and photographer, about her gardening start, which grew into a passion and career. It stemmed from her mother's love for gardening, which blossomed in her late-season of life, and the special delivery of pansies. Vicki's story includes the how-to of traditional pansy-growing methods.

Mary concludes by encouraging listeners to share their gardening stories and reflect on the beauty and miracles of nature.

Related Posts and Podcasts:

Ep 54. Sharing Comfort & Dividing Perennials
Sharing Comfort & Perennials - Blog Post

Another story featuring Vicki Johnson
Encouraging Indoor Spring Blooms - Blog Post 
Ep 196. Encouraging Indoor Spring Blooms of Hope 

Ep 51. Plants for Nooks & Crannies
Favorite Plants between Steppingstones - Blog Post

The Old Farmer's Almanac - How to Grow Pansies: The Complete Pansy Flower Guide

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I'd love to hear your garden and nature stories and your thoughts about topics for future podcast episodes. You can email me at AskMaryStone@gmail.com.

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Episode web page —Garden Dilemmas Podcast Page

Thank you for sharing the Garden of Life,
Mary Stone, Columnist & Garden Designer
                                        AskMaryStone.com

More about the Podcast and Column:

Welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries.

It's not only about gardens; it's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learned from mother nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So, let's jump in in the spirit of learning from each other. We have lots to talk about.

Thanks for tuning in, Mary Stone
Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone.com
Direct Link to Podcast Page

Transcript

Ep 202. Pansies Bring Vicki Johnson's Garden Start
Sat, Apr 19, 2025 9:21PM • 11:46
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Garden dilemmas, nature inspirations, northern peepers, pansies, Vick Johnson, garden writer, spring garden, Swiss giants, flower bed, gardening apprentice, Bruno, soil and water, spring contrast, snowstorm, French hybrids.
SPEAKERS
Mary Stone

Mary Stone  00:00
Mary, Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. I'm Mary Stone, and welcome to garden dilemmas, delights and discoveries. It's not only about gardens. It's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learn from mother nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So let's jump in, in the spirit of learning from each other. We have lots to talk about.

Mary Stone  00:23
Hello there. It's Mary Stone on the screen porch, and I'm here in the evening because I had to share the fact that the northern peepers are now peeping. This is the first evening of their chorus, and it just brings such a heartwarming feeling to me, because it's a sound that I just look forward to every spring. Oh, listen to them, but soon it will be almost unbearable to be out here with you in the evening, because they get really loud, really loud, but they sound so happy. So thank you for joining me, and I want to thank those of you that reached back after our last episode dividing perennials and sharing growth. I invited you to share your stories of what inspired your garden start and love of nature, and I received a heartwarming story from Vick Johnson. She is a garden writer, photographer and a dear friend you may recall, I shared some of her garden tips in episode 196 encouraging indoor blooms. So I look forward to sharing her story. She titled waiting for spring themed around pansies, those short-lived perennials we briefly spoke about last week that decorate our early spring gardens and window boxes. I adore their cute little faces, and they resemble our native common blue violets, Viola sororia, and they are indeed related. I'll have a link to the blog post in the show notes, along with some more information about the glorious pansies that we're going to chat about today. So on to Vickie Johnson's beautiful story about her garden start titled waiting for spring, and it starts like this. 

Mary Stone  02:09
I never knew my mother's garden. I had been told that before I was born there were roses on the porch post and sweet peas by the back door of our home in Southern Nevada, but by the time I was old enough to begin noticing such things, heart disease put strict limits on my mother's life. Economics required that she continued her teaching career, which left her with little strength or energy for anything else. But during the two years of her life following retirement, she focused her energy on a small flower bed, two orange trees and a lilac bush. I was in college, 500 miles north by then, but every Saturday, she would phone to give me updates on what flowers were blooming. 

Mary Stone  02:55
You wouldn't believe these pansies, she said, on an early March morning, they are so big. The woman who sold them to me said they are called Swiss Giants. I wish you could see them. There are yellow ones, white and purple, bluish ones with yellow centers, and they certainly are giant. 

Mary Stone  03:14
I knew nothing of gardens or other strange flower names she rattled off. But listening to her detailed, enthusiastic descriptions of how her garden grew, grew in my imagination. After her phone call, I walked over to the small orchard near my apartment in Utah, hoping to see signs of spring emerging on the apple trees, but there was nothing for my hungry eyes to see and the small Utah town, high in the Wasatch Mountains. Spring would come much later, but standing in the middle of the orchard, I could smell it coming up from the moist, thawing ground. 

Mary Stone  03:52
Two days later, I received a box Air Mail special delivery. This was the early 1970s and it would be 10 more years before, FedEx trucks roamed the neighborhood. Inside the heavy cardboard wrapped in a plastic bag and resting on a still moist bed of cotton balls, was a pansy, a purplish blue one with a yellow center. When I took it out and held it, it covered the palm of my hand.

Mary Stone  04:19
At the end of the semester when I went home to Nevada, there were no more pansies in her garden. In that part of the desert, summer heat arrives and takes hold in May, and pansies do not like that kind of heat, neither do I. After I graduated and my mother was no longer alive, let alone her garden, I moved east, and as soon as I was in a house with a ground of its own, I dug a flower bed. 

Mary Stone  04:46
It took just one year and a teaching job for me to learn that I did not, after all, want to be a schoolteacher. What am I going to do now? I lamented to a friend, what do you love doing? She asked, gardening. I said. But I don't know anything. I just read an article in the paper suggesting that if there's something you really want to do, see if you can find someone who will give you a job as an apprentice. What could it hurt to ask? 

Mary Stone  05:12
I'd love the idea of being an apprentice. So I stopped in at De Angelos Garden World and inquired, and yes, they always needed help in the spring and summer the same year, I met Bruno. Bruno was a doctor who was meticulous and tender with both his patients and garden and both loved him back. I invited myself over to his place often when he was outside, so that I could talk with him and learn as much as he was willing to share. 

Mary Stone  05:41
When I finished with the one-year teaching job, Bruno suggested I help his neighbor with her garden. But I don't know enough, I protested, I'll coach you, he said, smiling. So between D’Angelo’s and Bruno, I began to learn about soil and water, sunshine and shade. I worked the two gardening jobs for three years, until I went back to school to study photography. And each year, my flower beds got larger and fuller, and every year I planted pansies here in Northern New Jersey. 

Mary Stone  06:14
The first days of April can be one of remarkable contrast. There have been years when we've enjoyed days on end of brilliant sunshine and crocus blooming, Daffodil buds promising to open only to hear news of an approaching snowstorm. Heavy snowfall in April is not unheard of burying the crocus and flattening daffodils. (Actually, we just had one of those this past weekend, readers and listeners. No kidding.) 

Mary Stone  06:43
Whenever that happens, it reminds me of my first spring working with Mr. D'Angelo. Mr. D used to grow pansies using the traditional method market farmers and gardeners did for centuries. He would harvest seed from this year's pansies, then plant them out in the field in July. He would hand thin the seedlings, carefully weed each row, water when it didn't rain, and then mulch them with salt hay for the winter. (I think we have a little bit of rain falling now, the peepers are going to be so happy. Oh, what a pretty sound like Angel kisses in the sky.)

Mary Stone  07:22
 Early next spring, he would dig them up and set them out in heavy plastic boxes for sale. His field grown pansies were always Fuller, stronger and flowered earlier than any that had been started from seed in a greenhouse. And the colors were marvelous, kaleidoscope of blues, reds, oranges, purples, whites, salmon and yellow. Colors reminiscent of the original French hybrids from the 1800s types that are so rare. Google can't find any images of them. 

Mary Stone  07:53
I started each February working in Mr. D's greenhouse, transplanting impatient seedlings when crocus and Daffodil shoots appeared at home, I began checking the pansy field, eager to see the first blooms. In late March, bright purple, blue and yellow flecks began to appear as buds formed beneath the mulch. Soon the hay was removed and colorful faces opened wide to soak up the sun. I went out daily to see what colors had emerged, even though the greenhouses were loaded with small clouds of blooming geraniums and luscious house plants. 

Mary Stone  08:31
True spring was the breaking of the ground in the pansy field. Then one morning, we woke to find six inches of snow had fallen overnight. I showed up for work early that day and hurried out to check the pansies. I dug down through the thick, icy blanket and found limp petals folded in on each other and plastered across the leaves. The plants looked fine, but I was sure the blossoms were ruined, that we would not see more flowers until new buds opened. But the sun emerged from the clouds early, and by the end of the day, most of the snow had melted, but not much had changed out in the field. It was clear and much warmer the next morning, and when I checked down the pansies, I could hardly believe what I saw. Amid the slushy pockets of snow, the blooms were upright once again, with their tissue paper thin petals rippling in the brisk breeze. I had expected them to be ragged and broken, or at least faded, but they were bright and fresh as they had been before the storm. 

Mary Stone  09:38
My mother died before I finished growing up and had eyes that could see who she really was. As a child, I never knew she wanted a garden or that I would grow up to be a gardener. I learned all of the how and when from others, but all these decades later, there are pansies in my garden every spring. And I can see and almost feel her purplish blue one with a yellow center resting in the palm of my hand.

Mary Stone  10:08
 Isn't that gorgeous. I just love that, Vicki. And you know, your writing is splendid. I hope I give it some light with my voice. I hear your voice when I read it. And by the way, readers and listeners, your stories don't have to be written as if you are a writer. I would just love to hear any tidbits you want to share about your love of gardening and how it began, and how you love walking in nature, because I think we all share that in common. 

Mary Stone  10:36
I want to thank you for joining me on the screen porch and listening to the peeper chorus that brings such light to our world. I wonder if they're getting along with the wood frogs we talked about a few weeks ago, or maybe they already did their mating and laid their eggs. That's probably what happened, right? Nature is miraculous. Life is miraculous. Seasons are too. We cherish them, enjoy them, love them, embrace them, and live in the moment of them, because we are indeed one world in this garden of life, and I enjoy sharing it with you. See you next time on the screen porch. Have a great day. 

Mary Stone  11:16
You can follow garden dilemmas on Facebook or online at Garden dilemmas.com and on Instagram at hashtag Mary Elaine Stone. Garden dilemmas, delights and discoveries is produced by Alex Bartling. Thanks for coming by. I look forward to chatting again from my screen porch and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. Have a great day.