A visit to the Ed Hume Seed Company and Gardens in Puyallup will let you encounter one of the Pacific Northwest's most prominent figures. At 92 years old, Hume remains as enthusiastic, interesting and fun as ever, and since 1965 he has shared his vast knowledge of plants and nature through television, radio, newspapers and books.
Hume opens the garden to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and dedicates Tuesdays to cleaning and maintaining the garden. From children to seniors, Hume warmly welcomes everyone who steps into the living world he has been creating since 2002. The garden has about 14 sections, including a garden for blind visitors, with scents for the sense of smell, textures for the hands and plant names written in Braille; a maze for children and two puzzle gardens with clever combinations of plants and items for guessing games. For example, a rose planted in an abandoned toilet becomes a “rose pot” and a small tree cut out in the shape of a hand and hung by a string becomes a “palm tree.”
Artwork is found throughout: large painted metal aphids recall the hop empire of Puyallup's Ezra Meeker, whose family eventually lost their farm to hop aphids in the early 18th century. His late wife, Myrna, was an artist, and she and a group of artist friends painted bowling balls and arranged them like snakes to create a prehistoric “Bowlasaurus” creature.
The Japanese garden area is filled with lush bamboo groves and other typically Japanese features. “Everything in a Japanese garden tells a story,” says Hume. “If this was a true Japanese garden, the plants, the rocks, the water would tell our history, and tell the story of whether my wife was the center of the family or whether I was the center. It would also tell the story of how many children we had at the time the garden was created, and their approximate ages.”
The building that was Hume's home on the property before he purchased it now serves as the company's offices, and its walls are adorned with awards that highlight Hume's illustrious career: the National Horticultural Writers Award; induction into the Horticultural Writers Association's Hall of Fame, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Silver Circle Award; the Washington Florist Society's highest honor; and two International Emmy Awards: a silver award commemorating the 25th anniversary and a gold award commemorating the 50th anniversary of the hit show “Gardening in America,” which ran from 1965 to 2017.
“Our show was on television for 52 years, and we're the only TV show in the Pacific Northwest that's been on the air for over 50 years,” said Hume, and that's certainly something to be proud of. Hume started in television when it was still in its infancy, and over the years he's seen it evolve, from live broadcast to film to recorded television.
Hume's garden includes a collection of carnivorous plants: here he has “teratina” flowers which contain a liquid that attracts small insects such as aphids, flies, gnats and mosquitoes.
“Back in 1965, television was still new,” he says, “before I had my own show, I did a lot of TV appearances on all the channels. Some of them were just people sitting around a table discussing gardening because they didn't know how to present the show. When I applied to KIRO, I said I would never sit down, I would stand up and demonstrate,” which stumped them at first, but not until they understood his concept.
He fondly remembers JP Patches and Gertrude (Chris Wedes and Bob Newman) as guests on the show and as good friends.
“The kids loved going to the studio with me because they got to go on set and mess around and be on the show a lot. JP Patches didn't have a script. They improvised on the show,” Hume laughed.
Gardening for a Lifetime
Gardening and landscaping have been a blessing in Hume's life from the day he was born. His parents were avid vegetable and flower gardeners, raised fruit and nut trees, and kept bees along with chickens, rabbits and goats. During summer breaks from Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Ed worked for the University Flower and Bulb Company. This was back in about 1946. His first job out of graduation was with Marmo Nursery in what is now Seattle's University Village. Within about five months he was promoted to department head.
Two years later, he was offered a managerial position at Weitz Nursery in north Seattle, where he began work in February 1952 and was drafted into the Korean War the following month.
Ed Hume Seeds was founded in 1976 and continues to thrive today.
After seven weeks of basic training, Hume received a call to go to his battalion commander's office. Understandably nervous, Hume recalled, he was pleasantly surprised to learn that the commander knew of his background in landscaping and wanted him to “decorate his battalion to look better than any other battalion.” And he did just that. This led to Hume receiving a call from the general's staff, who had recommended him, asking to meet with him.
“He said, 'Don't be surprised if you get a call in a day or two,'” Hume laughed. “They took me across from the officers' club and said this is your new role, you're on the general's staff.”
The young soldier was rather surprised to learn that there were three houses on the General's grounds, one for the General, one for his guests, and the third was to be Hume's house, and his duty was to look after the General's guests.
Although Hume was being watched as a potential officer, life had other plans. “I stayed with the General until the day he retired. He told me I could go anywhere in the world I wanted, but I couldn't go to Korea. I only had six months left and I said I wanted to go to Seattle and work at Weitz Nursery on weekends and then get back to work. The General let me stay at Fort Lawton in Seattle for my final six months.”
He was required to serve in the reserves for the next five years, and met the woman he would later marry through a fellow soldier in the unit who was looking for a boyfriend for his wife's sister, Myrna. They were married on February 4, 1957, and had two sons, Jeff and James.
After 13 years with Weitz, he worked as store manager at Richmond Nurseries in Richmond Beach, where he designed and opened four stores before deciding to go out on his own. This time he moved to KIRO Channel 7 and launched his own television gardening show called “Green Up Time” and a 15-minute weekday segment on KIRO Radio. He also wrote gardening articles for the Everett Herald and his gardening column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer garnered an astounding 88% of the newspaper's readers.
In 1969 he moved to KING 5 Television where he worked until 1988, then moved to KING's sister station, KONG, where he completed his 52-year broadcast career.
Writing gardening books has allowed him to spread knowledge beyond the Pacific Northwest. He says his favorite book is How to Plant, published in 1976 and still available second-hand on Amazon.com. As the title suggests, the book teaches children how to “plant” and to appreciate how nature makes plants grow. The book features Weedles, furry, silent creatures that live deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, popularized in author Stephen Cosgrove's bestselling series.
Dale Jones operates a seed packing machine, a marvel of technology that was patented in the 1890s and remains so today.
His latest book is “Gardening with Ed Hume: Northwest Gardening Made Easy,” a thick tome filled with vibrant color photographs and covering topics ranging from container landscaping and choosing the right ornamental grasses to composting, fertilizing, and a section on “Ed's Best Tips for a Great Garden.” The book is out of print and in its second printing, but you can buy a used copy on Amazon.com.
His entry into the seed business in 1976 was a solution to the low wages of his TV and radio jobs and the small profits from paid speaking engagements, and Ed Hume Seed's specialty black seed bags are thanks to Myrna, who gave a different color to his collection of generic, generic white seed bags.
“She asked us all which one we liked best, and we all liked black,” Hume said. “For a year or two, we were the only company selling packaging in any color but white. Since then, our packaging has been all black.”
The way the Hume Seeds team packages seeds is a marvel in itself: they use an ingenious tabletop machine patented in the 1890s by the Boston/New York Brown Bag Company that measures out a scoop of seeds with clockwork precision, pours them into a paper bag, folds and seals them, producing hundreds of seeds per minute. Hume later acquired the company, which continues to manufacture and sell the invention.
The next time you feel like spending a quiet summer afternoon outdoors, consider heading out to Puyallup to meet Ed Hume. He truly loves people, and they love him.
“I've had a very interesting life,” he says. “One of the things I love to do is listen to people and hear about their lives. It's very interesting.”
For more information, visit humeseeds.com.
