OUT AND ABOUT

Out and About

By Jane Charmelo

January 29, 2003

Gardening pro shares experiences, insight

Talk to Robert Gabella long enough, and you begin to feel as if you can share personal details about a part of your life that some people might not understand.

Whether it's relating successes and triumphs or confessing mistakes and frustrations, Gabella comes across with the candidness of Dr. Phil - yet the compassion of Dr. Joyce Brothers - throwing a sprinkle of Stephen Hawking's physical-world wisdom and tell-it-like-it-is George Carlin humor into the mix.

The Villa Park resident, however, is not a therapist. He instead could be described as a guru of gardening, whose work - from African violets to zinnias - weaves in a passion for increased understanding of humankind's relationship with the world of all things horticultural.

Gabella's career has stretched out over a few decades, and it now reaches forward with a soon-to-be-published book, Garden Opus, a collection of past and present writings that includes a variety of subject matter interlaced with his essays, poetry, high-impact photography and high-resolution line drawings.

But in talking to Gabella, it appears that the journey, not any particular destination, has been the focus of his life's work.

That is, the insights into mistakes, not just lessons learned, are of importance to the horticulturist, whose "roots" of interest in the green world go back to his childhood.

As Gabella tells it, "I had very elaborate gardens by the time I was nine," adding that it was "curiosity, drive," that prompted his interest in gardening.

"I was born with it," he chuckled, but was quick to share his belief that "everybody has a connection to nature within them" on some level.

"I've been an amateur gardener since early grade school," he reiterated, citing more than once a childhood that included "family troubles."

During the junior high and high school years, Gabella put his interest in gardening on the back burner, saying it was a time when he was "least involved in gardening."

However, he admitted, it was "the time when I needed it most."

Starting off after high school with a journalism career in mind, Gabella dropped out of college for a time, then realized that horticulture was something he wanted to pursue.

Some people "have an innate sense of what appeals to them early on," in Gabella's view. As one of those people, he "began to re-emerge," enrolling in horticulture classes at College of DuPage.

Simply stated, "I knew that's what I wanted to be connected to," Gabella related, calling himself - without even a hint of a pun - "a late bloomer."

Gabella earned an associate's degree in 1988, after testing out of a number of horticulture classes; thanks to his "voracious appetite for reading" such works as seed catalogues, seed packets and horticultural encyclopedias.

Some 10 years later, he would earn a bachelor's degree in business management from North Central College and also has a minor in English writing.

Even before attending junior college, Gabella was working in the industry, starting in 1983, when he worked at the former Bruss Nursery.

Since then, the horticulturist - also a contributor to industry publications - has worked in a variety of jobs connected to the field, including project management for a commercial landscape construction firm, administration of centralized purchasing for a commercial landscape management firm, sales and marketing for a wholesale tree farm, vendor and client relations for a major international horticultural brokerage firm, commercial interior landscaping, retail nursery sales and management, and administration of an encyclopedic horticultural database for a greenhouse software developer.

The latter position is his most recent, Gabella said, explaining that he manages and monitors a "relational database" that is "always in a state of change" with regard to the updating of information about horticultural species.

Gabella also does presentations for such organizations as garden clubs and other community groups, where his discussions cover a variety of horticultural topics, including pesticide use and its safety.

Within that topic - and conjuring up the image of a homeowner clad in flip-flops and shorts on a warm breezy day - there is "nothing more humorous and nerve-racking at the same time," he quipped.

Consumers, Gabella continued, are often prone to mishandling the chemicals they use around their homes.

While he is not strictly a non-pesticide gardener, "I try to be as organic and low-impact as possible," he said.

Gabella added that he takes "the path of least environmental toxicity first," because "you don't get a bazooka to blow up an ant hill."

All kidding aside, "you always need to take precautions" when using these materials, and "I usually tie that in to related [horticulture] presentations," Gabella explained.

Also working as a landscape consultant for both residential and commercial clients, Gabella said he talks to people about topics "from turf to trees and everything in between," although he defers to arborists the more in-depth questions about trees.

People often have an idea in mind of what they want their yard or business surroundings to look like, yet Gabella is the one that may have to come along and burst their landscaping bubble, he admitted with a chuckle, because of various conflicts within their vision.

Calling himself an "honest consultant," Gabella stressed that he tells it like it is when it comes to the realities of successful gardening, falling back on his own experience - and mistakes - to help others plan their landscaping projects.

But optimistically speaking, Gabella said it's not beyond the realm of most of us to have a nice garden; and even enjoy the creative process, then sit back to admire the outcome.

There are enough different combinations and types of plants and flowers out there that just about anyone, even those whose only access to gardening means containers on a balcony, can be a decent gardener.

According to Gabella, flowers from cuttings are coming back into vogue after a period of time when, between World War II and the present, flowers grown from seed were typical. Citing petunias as "an excellent example," these days horticultural breeders "scramble to create competitive variety."

The horticulturist emphasized, though, that "cuttings aren't replacing seed-grown [flowers]. They're creating their own niche."

And, he observed, "most of what we grow in our gardens, of the more common flowers, shrubs, trees to a certain degree, is markedly different from the way the species looked in the wild."

Gabella himself (and with the help of Terra Nova Nurseries in Tigard, Ore.) is in the process of perfecting what he says is "a unique purple coneflower variety," called the Echinacea purpurea Twist of Fate™.

Raising seedlings of a wild species, Gabella said the second-generation flowers "expressed varying degrees of twisting and curling of the petals" in a mutated form.

The parent plants didn't have this quality, but "many of the children did. This really caught my eye," he continued, saying that "any observant gardener can notice nuances."

Taking a superior plant and destroying the rest "so they didn't get mixed in [to the planting bed]," Gabella said the discovery is really "a happy accident."

Throughout the gardener's experience, he is seeing the prairie-style gardening evolve, these days being "arranged more stylishly" than when it first emerged.

And, he added, "in conjunction with more traditional plants. You're seeing people break all boundaries."

Gabella said he advises folks that experimenting with container gardens that have "splashes of bold color" is a good way to get an idea of what a garden will look like.

"Then, translate [the scheme] into the garden on even a larger scale," he added.

Working with color schemes, like the variations within a single flower, or the shades of a sunset, can often be the basis for a colorful combination, Gabella mentioned, noting that "you can pick up inspiration in all different kinds of places."

Besides the many roads he's traveled on the career path, Gabella added photographer, artist and author to his repertoire.

During the late 1980s, as an "untrained" photographer, Gabella began taking close-up photos of flowers, although at first, he conceded, "I spoiled many more rolls [of film] than I kept."

"I began to really appreciate plants and scenery," he continued, relating that he enjoyed them "in situations where they were not staged, with natural light, natural settings, where you grasp the gesture of the plant as it grows."

Gabella has also created high-resolution line drawings, and now sells photography, note cards and posters, along with uncirculated original issues, and bound reprints, of a self-published newsletter he ran from December 1988 to February 1990, called "Garden Network" (later "Garden Network News").

What the horticulturist-turned-hybridist-photographer-artist-author may be proudest of, though, is "Garden Opus," which he said is a work in progress born, in part, out of "the mistakes I've already made as a gardener."

Remembering the curiosity and interest in gardening he held as a child, Gabella said he believes that "adults tend to give up more, get frustrated more easily."

However, he continued, "the joy of learning as a child gave me a lot of the perspective" he would intertwine into the book.

"Opus" is a collection of essays and sub-essays about "gardening, the environment and what it means to be a gardener growing up with somewhat of a turbulent childhood," Gabella defined, adding that it was a cathartic experience to pen the works, which he accumulated over a period of time.

"It traces the chronology of my gardening history to the point where I had a major revelation of what it meant to be connected to the earth," he elaborated, also saying that "some of the essays are serious and some are humorous."

For instance, he cited, there's a piece about what he calls "hortiphobia," or fear of calling members of the plant world by their real names. "Perhaps the names are too formal."

"Mum, glad, why are we all of a sudden shortening things? mused Gabella.

With somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek view, it is an era of convenience, "a twisted world when all the efforts at [horticultural] marketing serve to confuse people" by mixing common and scientific names for plants, flowers, shrubs and trees.

"Why not be militant and accurate in the same breath?" Gabella poses.

In "Opus," Gabella also delves into the "human rights toll exacted through the harvest of Burmese teak for use in high-end garden furniture," saying he is updating a piece from 1989 that he brings to light "the death of innocent peasants and the end to their way of life."

Oak and cedar, instead, are "choices [people] can feel good about," he added.

Whether he waxes poetic or looks at our relationship with nature, Gabella seems happy to share his thoughts about his passion for nature.

"Through gardening I found solace," he said, adding that besides developing problem-solving skills, he feels he learned, from his childhood experiences on up, that "it's OK to be good at something" that may seem outside the realm of "cool."

For some people religion brings that solace, yet "in certain ways there's a spirit to [gardening]," Gabella said, mentioning also "patience, respect for order, and pride of accomplishment."

"There's always a new season. There's always hope. And hopefully, a little more insight," he added.

The bottom line for Gabella is that "everything in the garden is a learning experience," and as for mistakes, "make them, accept them, and [don't] beat yourself up about them."

Besides, "isn't it nice if there's somebody who's made them first?"

Call Gabella at 834-4027, e-mail info@gardenopus.com, or visit www.gardenopus.com for more information on Gabella's products (a Verisign-guaranteed site) and services, gardening questions and links to other Web sites.

Also on Gabella's Web site is a link to www.buzzmix.com, a visitor-driven site that includes music and entertainment features, reviews, news and more.

THE LOMBARDIAN - Wednesday, January 29, 2003

THE VILLA PARK REVIEW - Wednesday, January 29, 2003

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