How Does Grow Garden? Well Enough for a Gardener of the Year Award

That someone with a name like Beautrice Grow would be named Gardener of the Year by the Orange District of the California Garden Clubs might seem like too much of a coincidence, but her last name had little to do with it.

“People say I must have deliberately changed my name because of my gardening interest,” Grow said, but “actually, it was a matter of love.”

Her husband of 45 years is named Lowell Grow.

And her love for gardening has been as much a constant in her life as her love for the former Marine Corps fighter pilot who retired as a colonel.

“We moved around a lot, but I always seemed to have a garden wherever I lived,” said Grow, who has been living in San Clemente for two years now and is an active member of the San Clemente Garden Club. “When I only had a balcony, I would put out pots of plants.”

Gardening, she said, is a labor of love that is “not really work for me. It keeps me healthy physically and mentally, and it’s also good therapy.”

Her interest in gardening is such that even though she no longer lives in Tustin, she is still a member of Tustin Garden Club.

After the couple moved to San Clemente, Grow went right to work planting vegetables, perennials, flowers, herbs and six fruit trees.

“Trees have a dual purpose,” she said. “You can get something from them and at the same time you can admire their great beauty. I just can’t imagine not having space for trees.”

And like any good gardener, she gets plenty of friendly visitors. “I enjoy seeing the birds coming into the yard, and wild rabbits stop and listen when I chat with them,” she said. “They’re not afraid of me anymore.”

Grow came by her knowledge about flora and fauna growing up in a wooded area in Tennessee. “My white-bearded gentle old grandfather would take me for walks into wooded areas, and he would identify trees and bushes and plants,” she said.

It was her mother, however, who taught her how to garden and plant. “My mother had a terrific interest in gardening, and it became part of my life,” Grow said, adding that one of her chores as a child was to bring in water for the plants.

“I know I’ve always enjoyed working with the soil and seeing things grow, especially when I grow them from seed,” she continued. “It’s more exciting to see them emerge from seeds rather than using established plants.”

Of her award, Grow said, “I didn’t expect to win anything, but it’s nice to have your work recognized.” More than anything, she said, she loves to share what she had grown, often giving cuttings from her plants to friends. “To show and share my plants is one of the pleasures of my life.”

In her wildest flights of fancy, Evelyn Hutchings, 60, a retired high school English teacher who lives at Leisure World, never saw herself competing in a synchronized swimming meet in Denmark.

But she and Barbara Pedersen, 62, another Leisure World resident who is a former competitive ice skater, will perform together July 25 in the synchronized swimming competition of World Masters Games in Aarhus, Denmark. The games are competitions for senior citizens.

“We’ll do our very best,” Hutchings vowed. “But if we come in dead last, the fact we’ll be there is what’s important.” The women have competed four times so far in regional meets, taking three first-places and one second.

“I never competed in anything before I started synchronized swimming,” said Hutchings, who described her previous athletic pursuit as “competitive couch potato” before she joined a women’s swimming club at Leisure World about four years ago. Members of the club, called the Aquadettes, range from 55 to 87 years old.

“Some of the women in their 70s are our best swimmers,” she said.

Acknowledgments--Sonia Steiner of Fountain Valley, a senior at Mater Dei High School, will be visiting the Soviet Union, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and England this summer as a student ambassador in the People to People Ambassador program. Students chosen for the program are selected on the basis of academic achievement, community involvement and recommendations from teachers and counselors.