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Friendship and Gardening
Friendship Grows
(From left) Verna Jennings,
Pat Dudeck and Pam Vohs.
(Originally published: May/June 2006)
Eight years ago, three northwest Missouri women gardened alone. Retired caterer Pat Dudeck tended a big vegetable patch on a windswept hilltop outside the town of Oregon.
In Pam Vohs' town garden, hostas hunkered under trees and roses bloomed on a sunny arbor while Pam worked in her law office.
Verna Jennings had just opened her own country greenhouse to feed her passion for more plants to fill out the farmyard she was transforming. Then they met, thanks to a local herb club. Their temperaments blended like a well-designed plant combination.
"I remember thinking Pat was so prim and proper," Pam says. "But she's fun and crazy." The other two could not picture professional Pam breaking a sweat in the garden. "But Pam loves it when I bring her some well-rotted horse manure," Verna says. Their visions vary: Pat's garden is tidy. Verna's and Pam's never stay within the lines.
Over time, like a seedling grown into a bloom-covered rosebush, their relationships also have become fuller and more bountiful.
"When Verna lost her father, it was May and so beautiful outside. We picked buckets and buckets of flowers and made big arrangements," says Pam, who also helped with flowers for Verna's daughter's wedding.
Usually, they don't dwell on the deeper parts of their connections, not when the thrill of the hunt for plants makes their hands twitch with anticipation. They've been known to buy one potted perennial—Russian sage, herbs, you name it—and divide it several ways. "Everyone takes the same stuff and does something else with it," Verna says.
They refer to themselves as "professional garden travelers" because they tour together around the country to see nurseries and public gardens.
They love gardening, to be sure, but nowadays, they care more about each other. Pat puts it best: "Plants introduced us, but friendship has kept us together."
