Recently at the TPIE (Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition) I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Mr. André Viette, an icon in gardening. Around 1996 or 1997, I had a telephone call from André, shortly after starting Stokes Tropicals and mailing out our first catalog and starting a website. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. As I recall it was a very pleasant call, with André being enthusiastically interested in our “new” tropical plant offerings. He wanted most of them for his St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, home and garden. André made a sizable order of some of our most exotic (Zone 10 plants) and we – I hope – successfully satisfied his order with our best quality plants.
Then many years went by – precisely 11 or 12 and I had no contact with
him. Although he may have had contact with us through our website or our catalog.
Then this January (Jan. 16-19) I attended the TPIE annual meeting in Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida as I am wont to do every year and, lo and behold I see André Viette
listed as one of the presenters in a special early morning seminar session.
So being interested in the green revolution (the general subject of the session)
and having remembered André as one of our early and very enthusiastic
customers, I made it my business to attend his presentation. And, boy am I
glad I did. He made a great presentation that captivated his audience of gardening
experts with his masterful command of gardening facts, truisms and accounts
of “what we used to do and should now be doing about gardening, fertilizing
and caring for the environment”.
I learned that André’s father came to this country from Switzerland.
And that André had gone to Cornell University and got a degree in horticulture.
And he has a very successful nursery (André Viette Farm & Nursery)
in Virginia and has a radio show “In the Garden” that is second
to none in the U.S. – it reaches a potential listening audience of 3,000,000
people in Virginia, Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. After
his presentation that had every eye and ear in the room transfixed on him,
I had the pleasure of introducing myself to him and his lovely wife, Claire.
We talked plants and tropicals for a few minutes and I gave him a copy of my
most recent catalog. And he graciously asked me to be on his Saturday radio
show as a guest 2 weeks later. A date was set and I was telephoned at the appropriate
time on a Saturday morning and had a short fact-filled interview (discussion)
with André about bananas, gingers, heliconias and a few other tropicals – all
in the space of 5 minutes or so. Such radio interviews on garden shows are
electric to me. I eagerly look forward to them and they always end too quickly.
Some of the garden radio shows that I appear on regularly are Garden Compass
(in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho) on Saturdays and/or Sundays and
WFLA 970 in Tampa, Fla., “Florida Gardening” with Mark Govan and
Stan DeFreitas, which is on Sundays, and covers the Tampa Bay area (St. Petersburg,
Clearwater, Bradenton, and environs).
But back to André, I understand he has a fantastic tropical garden on St. Thomas, in Charlotte Amalie, above the harbor. He and his wife lead tours to Costa Rica, on cruise ships, Australia and New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland and the Virgin Islands. I can’t wait to go and see him on St. Thomas. And by the way, he has just stocked up on some of the newest and hottest tropical plants for his garden on St. Thomas. I love to hear his enthusiastic and distinctive voice. The pleasure is mine.
Until my next blog,
Glenn