Family’s passion for gardening becomes deep-rooted commitment

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Elgin Smith started gardening more than 20 years ago, he hadn’t planned on his hobby 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.

Several years ago Smith saw a water wheel and grist mill in a fellow photographer’s back yard and decided to do the same in his garden. “He’d always had an interest in grist mills 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 currently 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.”

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.

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 homeschools 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.

How to garden as a family

Find your common interests: Dorothy Smith, Judy Schuck and Sherra Schuck all have a love of perennials.

Have a plan: Concentrate on one project, such as a water feature, at a time.

Run new ideas past each other: Judy Schuck and Sherra Schuck consult with each other on what they like, new ideas they have, what they’ve seen at the local nursery. Because the garden is in Dorothy Smith’s yard, she signs off on everything.

Balance the experience of longtime gardeners with enthusiasm of newbies: Be realistic about what will and will not grow successfully in a family garden.

Get the kids involved: Make playing in the dirt not only fun but educational.

The Smith-Schuck family of gardeners

Dorothy Smith, at 90, still oversees the family garden. She wants a butterfly garden. Her daughter and granddaughter have created a place for perennials that like a lot of sun and are attractive to butterflies.

Judy Schuck doesn’t have a lot of sun in her yard, so a lot of her garden is taken up with perennials that like shade, mainly hostas.

Sherra Schuck is relatively new to gardening, so she’s more adventurous. Lots of her trees and perennials are in pots ready to relocate.

Mikael Schuck likes to trim bushes, plant bulbs, help out at Gardeners of America Overland Park plant sales.

Together: Elgin Smith put in a water garden that, when he died last year, fell to neglect. The women have teamed up to get the grist mill up and running and have enhanced the water feature with plants.

Getting kids involved

Start them young: Take them into the garden with you. Let them dig holes, place bulbs, back fill with soil.

Let them get dirty: To encourage them, let them know that they’re allowed to play in the dirt, that there’s a purpose to it.

Make it a learning experience: For example, teach parts of the plant.

Allow it to be fun: Treat it as a hobby rather than a chore.

Source: Judy Schuck and Sherra Schuck