Mother’s Green Thumb
by chuckofish
Our mother loved to garden and she was good at it, too. I suspect she also enjoyed the solitude; no one ever helped her garden and it was usually too buggy to sit with her by our tiny fish pond. But we did accompany her on her many visits to Westover Greenhouse, a vast plant nursery on Olive Street Road not a far drive from home, but in an area we had little cause to visit otherwise. To this young dual personality, Westover’s meant adventure. I loved exploring the endless, dripping greenhouses.
It was like wandering through a giant, leafy mansion in which every room had a different style decoration. In one there might be pretty flowers; in another succulents.
If you followed the melodious sound of dripping water, eventually you’d find tucked into a corner a little pond full of carp and water plants.
The damp heat could be oppressive, but I found the rich, earthy smell of the place intriguing. Since I was just a little girl, the flower beds were at shoulder height so I could peer over the top and spy on other shoppers. Okay, I grew over the many years we visited the place, but that’s how I remember it best. I think my incessant running around and disappearing drove my poor mother to distraction, but we didn’t stop going. As far as I know, Westover closed many years ago. I could find no trace of it on the internet, so all these pictures are of other places. So it goes…
As soon as I finish this post I’m off to the Potsdam Garden Club’s annual plant sale. It takes place in the hockey arena and no doubt won’t be quite as heady as the Westover visits of my childhood. Still, it’s spring and time to get working in the yard. This year, with the help of a friend, I’m going to plant a flower garden. I think mother would approve, don’t you?
dual personalities 
I remember going to Westover’s after church because it was on the way home and open on Sundays when most stores were not. It closed many years ago and was torn down. There used to be a Target there–God only knows what it is now!
I think our mother liked working in the yard for the therapeutic value of ripping and tearing out vines and weeds. Good for the over-vexed soul.
We also went to Westover quite often, but my mother hung out and gazed wistfully at the rose bushes, which she could never grow once she got them home (I suspect she was just to lazy to water them) – so I rarely was able to wander around the houses. I DO remember the little concrete fish pond – but only because you reminded me.
Westover moved out on Olive way out at the end near where it crosses I-64, on the ridge just above Chesterfield Valley. / Missouri Bottoms. That location was their landscaping service nursery, where they had dozens if varieties of trees and bushes heeled in to the ground and mulched. Eventually that land was sold off for an office building or something. Seems land is more valuable than plants.
I worked there for a few weeks one summer during college – a seemingly never-ending quest to find something to do for money when I wasn’t a deckhand on the river barges.