A Dedicated Business Leader in Warminster Wants to “Make Everyone a Gardener”

In the summer of 1876, the World’s Fair was held in Philadelphia to commemorate the Centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The theme was Agriculture and Innovations in Farming and Technology. W. Atlee Burpee, an 18-year-old prodigy of breeding pigeons and chickens, opened a stand called Atlee Burpee & Company at 5th and Market Street. As the summer passed by, Burpee became determined to answer his customers’ by far most surprising question, which was why European vegetable seeds did so poorly in America.

A scientist at heart, Burpee wondered if the problem was latitude and weather. He surmised that seeds that thrived in European summers were struggling in America due to the lower latitude (which results in relatively shorter days and longer nights) and much more variable climate. The seeds did not thrive in the extreme swings in temperatures and alternating heavy moisture and punishing droughts. Speculating that the opposite might be true: That seeds of plants that struggled and even failed in Europe might thrive in the U.S., he set out to test the theory.

Consequently, Burpee traveled through Europe the next summer, collecting seeds from plants that failed in Europe’s higher latitudes — where longer days and shorter nights create a more even, moderate climate — imagining they might thrive in the U.S. From this collection he discovered that he was right: that some of Europe’s failures were America’s successes. So, he used these “misfits” to breed the first major collection of vegetables adapted to America. After that, Burpee tested and refined his seed production in order to grow the highest quality vegetable seed for American farmers. In just 18 years, Burpee had become the world’s largest seed company. Changemaker indeed.

Today, George Ball, a veteran seedsman and the owner of W. Atlee Burpee Company since 1991, continues to take Burpee to new heights. Their latest breakthrough is Garden Sown, a line of innovative tomatoes and peppers bred for convenient outdoor direct sowing (and on offer at the Philadelphia Flower Show this month).

How does Atlee Burpee’s work inspire your innovation and new products today?

Figuring out how to make seeds grow better and to help farmers and gardeners succeed has been Burpee’s history for 149 years. It was the first seed company in the world based on scientific research. Also, Mr. Burpee made copious and detailed notes of his conversations with customers and preserved these archives, diaries, and records of all his experiments with seeds. His work and mission inspire all of us at Burpee.

Why are the new Garden Sown seeds such a huge leap forward?

We have bred two tomatoes and three peppers that you sow directly into the ground without having to transplant indoor-started plants. This saves time and avoids what’s called “transplant shock,” which can slow your tomato plants’ growth, fruiting, and ripening for a month.

We started with two tomatoes, one large beefsteak and one large grape. “Groundswell” is this big [he holds hands about eight inches apart] and named from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for tomato, tomatl, which means “swells quickly”. You sow it in the garden soil and its fruits create a tidal wave of flavor. We also created a large grape type, “Rain Drops.” Drop the seeds into the garden and watch the sky’s rain help them grow.

Simultaneously, we worked on three peppers. “Sow Sweet” produces exceptionally sweet, petite red peppers bursting with flavor; “The Groundfather” is an extremely high-yielding, savory-sweet Italian pepper that ripens from red to green; and “Lavaland,” a small Thai-type that’s hotter than cayenne but without the bitter taste and yields dozens at a time all summer to mid-fall.

What is so revolutionary about these Garden Sown seeds?

Garden Sown seeds require fewer steps, since you don’t need peat pots or plastic flats inside. Sow them straight into soil, four in a hole, about a quarter inch under the surface, and three feet apart. It means you can start outside around the same time potato gardeners sow their tubers, within the week before the average date of the last spring frost. People love to plant from seed and watch them grow outside like peas, beans, and corn. Now, with our cold-tolerant seedlings, you can watch tomatoes grow outside too.

These seeds are getting sunlight, not window or electronic light. They thrive on rainwater — not from the faucet. This is the way tomato seed naturally wants to grow. We got to this point by researching genetics. We looked for expressions of seedlings thriving in cool weather, such that you don’t have to protect the seedlings indoors. We have only two tomato and three pepper varieties — but it’s a huge step toward making gardening easier, especially for new gardeners.

What is a garden’s ultimate gift? The gardening itself? Or a sense of wonder?

I love helping my customers discover something they’ve never known before, something they’ve never seen before, or feel something they’ve never felt before. It’s like the postmodern definition of art, the profoundness of the new.

We respect plants and understand how valuable they are, because they make their own food, their own energy, and the oxygen we breathe. But the most important attribute of a garden is that, like life itself, it keeps changing, ever fascinating. Finally, its gift is our survival: no garden, no food.

What was your biggest challenge to date, and how did you overcome it?

I made some mistakes about 20 years ago, which made me realize that I had to change myself rather than change other people or try to change things around me. I welcome adversity; failure is my greatest teacher.

What has been your biggest win?

We had a big challenge at the start of COVID. The rest of the world was ordered to stay home, but we were considered essential, so we had to figure out how to work and meet this sudden need — everyone wanted to garden, so we had an enormous increase in business. People were sitting around at home and looking at their lives with new eyes; many had never paid much, if any, attention to their backyards. “Wow,” they thought. “I could create a garden!” The result was a tsunami of seed and plant orders, a sudden explosion of demand.

My great Burpee staff had to move desks and machinery six to 10 feet apart. We didn’t have room for everyone here at once, so our capacity was reduced by 30% while sales went up almost 40%. Our problem was time versus space. We got together to solve it, and we went from one shift of eight hours to three shifts of six hours, even for a week, four shifts of six hours—all day! So we conquered space with time.

“The most important attribute of a garden is that, like life itself, it keeps changing, ever fascinating.”

Is what you do — innovating with seeds — a kind of partnership with Mother Nature?

I think of it more like the sculptor who removes what he doesn’t want and leaves the rest to create a new form. Take “Big Boy” tomato. You want to know why “Big Boy” is so popular? Because in the olden days, the early ’40s and during the War, tomato vines would climb up so tall that by the time vine-ripened fruits were ready to pick, they could grow up to 10 feet or more. The farmer would pin them up to a trellis on a big, tall stake using string or old stockings to keep the stems from bending over under the weight of the fruit. Then that farmer — with no local health care, living out in the rural heartland — gets up on wooden ladders or stools, often homemade, and perhaps he trips and falls. That’s the end of his farming for the season. So we figured out how to create shorter, more bushy plants that were easier to harvest. Everyone wanted them, plus they had aromatic, acid-sweet, and beautifully shaped fruit. “Big Boy,” like Burpee, became a household name.

Gardeners become emotionally invested in their gardens. What do they get out of it?

Gardening is a dance of life between us, the animals, and plants. When you have a garden, you understand that relationship and appreciate where food comes from. Remember, we need gardens to experience the true delicious fragrances and flavors of fruits and vegetables.

Research has found that gardening can boost your mood as effectively as the average antidepressant. Spending time around flowering plants daily — inside the house in pots and vases as well as outside, in beds and cutting gardens — is equal to taking prescription medication — with no side effects. Another study found that the bacteria in soil can help strengthen your immune system. Real flavors and tastes of vegetables, fruits, and herbs are found only in the garden — the produce department offers tasteless, nutrition-less and dull-looking replacements. So gardening is investing in your health.

Walking through the woodsy part of a garden or park, you are revisiting how we were meant to walk through the world. You’re roving in an ancient way that reaffirms how you are meant to feel. It takes you back to a deeper place, away from your anxieties about what you’re dealing with or what’s happening in your day. Spending time outdoors in nature is anti-trauma.

Gardening gets passed down from generation to generation. Are we growing memories?

That’s true. My paternal grandmother would take me into the garden and show me how to grow flowers when I was young, around four years old. She had different types of tulips, and she would wait until they were almost open, then she’d say, “George, let’s look at the tulips.” She’d tell me to look as deep as I could into the tulip. I was little, so my face was really in the tulip. I’ll never forget peering deeply into one that was blooming — a yellow one with little red parts in it. That was a world I had never seen before. I’d never known there was such a thing as this experience of looking inside a tulip. It was like I was in the middle of it. It mystified me.

Do you prefer to garden alone or with others?

I do both because I’m always gardening. I’m involved with public and community gardens, as well as gardens in parks and colleges. I also tend to my own gardens or other people’s gardens. When you go alone into the garden, that’s a magical thing. And if I’m with my wife, there’s just nothing better than that. A garden is a good place to think. I’ve had many epiphanies — sudden, unexpected revelations — in my garden.

Have you been a “seedsman” your whole life?

I grew up in a nursery and started playing in gardens at age eight, and working summers at age 10. I apprenticed to Claude Hope, a great Texan and later Costa Rican plant breeder and seed grower, in Dulce Nombre, Costa Rica, for about 18 months. He was a genius in every way, particularly in petunias and impatiens. His wisdom was one of the bedrocks of my youth.

I studied History of Religion at Bard College and DePaul University. For seven years, I left home and worked out where the dogs bark, including a four-year stint in the music industry. I returned in ’81 and helped my family grow our business. I bought Burpee in 1991 to learn more about the consumer and the home gardening world, including vegetables starting with potatoes, and cut flowers starting with anemones.

We serve the home gardener, community gardener, homesteader, and small farmer. Next year, our company turns 150 years old.

You are known to donate seeds to people all over the world. How can you manage that?

Giving away seeds to those in great need has always been part of what we do. We’ve shipped seeds to places where war, revolution, natural disasters, and population shifts have made farming and growing food difficult or impossible, such as Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Iraq, and many other parts of the Middle East. We’ve even shipped to the Pakistani border to help Afghans who were forced to flee.

Also, through The Burpee Foundation, we support U.S.-based community and urban gardens with grants and seed donations. Since its inception in 2003, we have given away over $8 million. We want to help anyone who wants to grow their own food to be able to do so.

Favorite Local Artist: The multi-talented Steve Tobin has a studio in Quakertown, where he creates large bronze and glass works, including the Trinity Root, in honor of the tree that saved Trinity Church from falling debris on 9/11. I have several of his sculptures in the gardens at Fordhook Farm.

Favorite Philly place to eat: Hands down, Heller’s Seafood Market. If you love great fresh seafood and takeout creations, trust me: you must make a pilgrimage to Heller’s in Warrington.

Favorite Philadelphian from history: Benjamin Franklin, the designer of the Benjamin Rush Hospital Garden. He used seeds he experimented with and brought home from Europe, both there and at Bartram’s Garden. Many of the Founding Fathers, such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, were avid horticulturalists who envisioned a nation of gardeners.

Favorite place you go to relax: I go to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona for its sublime beauty and peace.

Favorite Philly small business: Danmar Jewelers in Warminster, PA, a family-owned jeweler who helped me select my engagement and wedding rings. I love to sit there and chat.

You don’t know Philly until you’ve…. Driven down Kelly Drive. With winding paths and views of the river, it always reminds me of driving in Paris. To a boy from Chicago where everything is flat, and you can drive for miles all in one visual plane, the geology and topography here is an exhilaration.

I wish people knew this about Philadelphia: Bartram’s Garden. That’s where some of the Founding Fathers went to relax in the shade and solve their differences while writing the Constitution. Gardening helped found the nation.

Why I love Philly and want to give back: Because the Burpee Family and group of companies and the many generations of employees have dedicated their lives to helping those in need.

LUCY DANZIGER is a journalist, an author, and the former editor-in-chief of Self Magazine, Women’s Sports & Fitness, and The Beet.