Spring is the season of outdoor festivals, dancing wildflowers, earth-drenching
showers, budding trees, Spring Break and Easter. It
’s a time of celebration and a time of reverence. It’s spring cleaning, paying taxes, dusting off the lawnmower, Easter bonnets and
egg hunts.
The gray days of winter are past, and the dog days of summer are still several
months away. It
’s a time for new birth and a new outlook. The butterflies and hummingbirds
return, the robins and whooping cranes pass through on their way north, and the
tulips and azaleas bob their vibrant heads in the stiff breeze.
Spring is also a time when most of us—green thumb or black—venture to the garden center for bedding plants to perk up the winter-worn
landscape. Some of the more ambitious of us even dig a little patch of ground
for a vegetable garden.
Did you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes to ensure that weekend
gardeners have plenty of choices when the planting bug hits? At Brookwood
Community in Brookshire, just 10 minutes west of Katy, the residents and day
participants have been working all winter filling bedding flats with sprigs,
sprouts and cuttings that will turn into gorgeous blooms at just the right time
for planting.
The retail greenhouse of Brookwood is quickly becoming one of the best places in
the greater Houston area to purchase a variety of hardy plants that are
well-acclimated to southeast Texas
’ hot, humid climate. Although Brookwood may be best known for its spectacular
poinsettia sale in December, it also produces a plethora of plants for
Valentine
’s Day, Easter and other seasons and events throughout the year.
Brookwood horticulturists don’t grow their own Easter lilies as they do the poinsettias, and most lilies are
preordered by churches, but there will be plants in the greenhouse for Easter
shoppers, says Joe Kempfer, horticulture manager.
“We sell lots of bleeding hearts for Valentine’s plus 15,000 geraniums and hibiscus. We will be sold out of geraniums by Mother’s Day. In addition to Easter lilies, we have miniature roses, Gerber daisies,
impatiens and cyclamen. We have massive Boston ferns for Easter and some plants
that are not what you would usually find in a local retail nursery
—abutilon and angel wing begonias,” Kempfer said. The retail greenhouse carries Louisiana irises because they are
tougher and hardier. Herbs are sold year around. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant
sell out quickly in the summer, and garden mums and asters are among the fall
crops.
Brookwood horticulture workers mass-produce summer plants from the end of
February through Mother
’s Day. These include lantana, verbena, esperanza, plumbago, Mexican heather,
hibiscus, euphorbia, dragonweed, begonia hanging baskets and edible
nasturtiums. They begin producing poinsettias in August when plugs arrive from
the eastern United States.
“We grow natural season poinsettias; no darkness needed,” Kempfer said.
The Brookwood Community is a God-centered educational, residential and
entrepreneurial community for adults with functional disabilities. There are
100 residents who live in group homes on the 475-acre campus and 60 other
program participants who ride the bus every day from various points in Houston.
“There is something everybody can do no matter their mental and physical state.
Residents and day students get to pick their jobs. They rotate every three
months,
” Kempfer said. “Some put bar codes on. Some work in the propagation shop; some in the statuary.” This past Christmas, Brookwood residents produced and sold 40,000 poinsettias.
Nearly every one of the community
’s 47 greenhouses was stocked with bright red blooms. Kempfer says the residents
begin asking when they can start the next crop almost as soon as the last
poinsettia is sold.
“Poinsettias are what put Brookwood horticulture on the map,
he said.
In addition to the retail greenhouse, Brookwood showcases the artistic and
horticultural talents of its residents and participants in the community store
which is open to the public every day.
“The store focuses on the Brookwood product,” said Robin Shope, store manager, “not just plants but ceramics, home decorations and other products created by
