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AHS Region 2/Great Lakes Newsletter
Region 2 Summer Meeting Tour Gardens (continued)
The Coburg Planting Fields
by Phillip Mallory from Culver, Indiana
Pulling the car into the drive of The Coburg Planting
Fields (Phil Brockington and Howard Reeve’s garden),
I would have thought that I had the wrong address
had it not been for the bus parked at roadside. The
house and barn completely hide both the display garden
and the extensive planting fields that are part and
parcel of this final stop on our Region 2 garden tour.
From the parking lot, I walked through a large, deeply
shaded garden filled with hostas of every description
on either side of the generous paths. It is through this
cool and dark retreat that you first saw the large,
brightly lit field that is planted row upon row with our
favorite flower. It is a spectacular view.
The paths between rows are of proportions sufficiently
generous to accommodate a large number of visitors
simultaneously, which–as it turned out–was quite fortunate.
The busses had left the previous stop before I
did, and they had made better time to boot; so, by the
time I arrived in the garden, we were a big crowd, indeed.
Tucked up behind the house, east of the pool and north
of the waterfall, is a circular display garden which contains
spiders and spider variants, including those that
Howard uses in his spider-breeding program.
I was particularly taken with STARMAN’S QUEST, a
mauve flower with a gorgeous, purple eye that stopped
more than a few lookers “dead in their tracks.”
At the moment, Howard is not using this beauty for
breeding because he is involved in his own crazy
crosses (his words, not mine). He told me that he is
putting IDA’S MAGIC on every tet spider he can bring
to hand: TECHNY SPIDER, CARMINE MONARCH
and HIGHLAND PINCHED FINGERS, for instance.
It was, he said, the same kind of craziness that led to
the cross FIRESTORM X COBURG FRIGHTWIG
which produced his Region 2, 1998, Englerth Award
winner GRANDMA KISSED ME.
As I turned to the growing fields, the activity became
Lots of Region 2 visitors looking and taking
notes in the Coburg Planting Fields
hectic, almost impressionistic. So many flowers, so
little time. Down the row, hurry, hurry, hurry. Next
row, hurry. We stopped, we stooped, we looked. We
snapped, we wrote, we bought. This was a “shop op” of
the first magnitude, and we were not to be denied. Bags
filled, and smiles broadened. Whistles blew. Groans.
“Too soon.” Scribbled a check for payment of goodies.
Boarded buses. Engines roared. Silence.
I picked up my own bag laden with new acquisitions
and headed for the car. I drove my own car on our second
day of tours on our way home to Indiana. As I
flipped on the air conditioner and headed for home, I
knew that this, my first Region 2 Summer Meeting,
would certainly not be my last.
Howard Reeve, Rosemarie Foltz, Phil Brockington, and
others talking and resting, and at Coburg Planting Fields
Note: All those great bus plants given to Region 2
Summer Meeting visitors had been grown by Phil
Brockington and Howard Reeve in the Coburg Planting
Fields for the last two or more years.
Page 28 Fall 2000/Winter 2001