Ilene Sternberg plants giggles while others split hairs over species. And she knows what she's joking about.
By Virginia A. Smith
Inquirer Staff Writer
The world of horticulture can be such a hothouse - precious, overheated, known for hellebore zealots and rabid rosarians, fussy nomenclature and high-minded science.
So what to make of Ilene Sternberg?
Her business card says "will work for chocolate." She wears rubber-chicken earrings. "Give me eBay or give me death!" she declares.
Who is this crazy person?
She's a beloved fixture on the local gardening scene, a fast-talking, wisecracking Groucho Marx of a plant person who pokes fun at the gardening world from the inside out.
And she's got every right. She has garden cred.
Sternberg, 63, is a longtime freelance garden writer with an academic certificate of merit in ornamental plants from Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square. She's a former garden columnist and coauthor of two horticulture books, including this year's Perennials for Pennsylvania (Lone Pine Publishing, $19.95).
Though her commentary usually includes a few nuggets for experienced gardeners, she mostly writes "for people with no knowledge of gardening." And she does it with humor, so her readers won't be intimidated.
Her group e-mails are an institution, too: 257 people get them daily. Favorite subjects are President Bush and Congress, but just last week she sent one with pictures of pooches in goofy Halloween costumes.
"Halloweenie time," she called it.
Sternberg says she met Bill Thomas, executive director of Chanticleer, the 35-acre public garden in Wayne, in a conifer class at Longwood, where he earlier worked and taught. She liked him so much she made him a hat out of live bagworms, a weird and fearsome-looking moth.
"That was a great hat," says Sternberg.
Thomas begins laughing before he can even tell his Sternberg stories. A favorite: One night last year, after a particularly long day at the "pleasure garden," he came home, fixed himself dinner and a glass of wine.
"I'm sitting by myself reading, and I got to something Ilene had written for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden newsletter, can't remember what it was now, but I spit out my wine, I was laughing so hard.
"Her writing has that effect on me," he says.
And on others, even long ago.
Abbey Meyers, a fifth-grade friend from Brooklyn whom Sternberg calls "a big nerd," recalls Sternberg - nee Harfenist - as "a hell-raiser."
"She was the smartest girl I ever went to school with, but she was so bored by what we were learning that she used all her creativity to do things that would annoy the teachers," Meyers says.
Sternberg once hid a spool of thread in her hand and innocently walked round and round the classroom until everyone was enmeshed in a wispy web. "You couldn't walk anywhere," says Meyers, president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders in Danbury, Conn.
One year, Sternberg, who was known to play hooky, was voted class president, prompting the teacher to tut-tut, "You people should be more careful choosing officers."
Apparently, Sternberg's mother had similar experiences. "People used to stop her on the street in Brooklyn to ask, 'Did Ilene ever grow up?' "
"I HOPE NOT!" the mischievous daughter booms at the retelling last week.
Meyers thinks Sternberg's humor reflects "the type of culture we were raised with in Brooklyn. You knew you had to use your elbows to get a seat in the subway. Otherwise, you'd be standing."
Humor also can insulate against sadness. Sternberg has had her share.
Her father died young of a heart attack, and she lost her husband, Nat, a gifted research scientist, to a rare form of cancer 12 years ago.
"We had 28 years, all happy. I was very lucky," Sternberg says.
The couple moved to West Chester in 1984, after stints in Indiana, Paris and Maryland. They had a daughter, Rebecca, now 36. Throughout those years, Sternberg worked as an art teacher and librarian. She took up painting, made and collected jewelry, obsessed on beads and eBay.
Gardening was never a huge deal, though during her husband's eight-year illness, she found herself gravitating to it more and more.
"When somebody has cancer," she explains, "even if it's in remission, every three months they have to go for a checkup. The times my husband was going, I would be shaking. I was such a wreck."
Gardening became therapy, as did friends.
Eve Thyrum, a friend for more than two decades, shares Sternberg's love of beads, ethnic jewelry and gardening. They rib each other as only good pals can.
Sternberg delights in causing "genus envy" in Thyrum, an accomplished horticulturist in Wilmington. "Eve's so perfect at everything, any time I can one-up or outdo her in the garden, I love it," Sternberg says.
And what about that jewelry-buying trip they took to Morocco, where merchants in ancient medinas can dissemble for hours before consummating the deal? Was Sternberg a good negotiator?
"No, not that good," Thyrum says. "I think I'm better."
Clearly, Sternberg's smart-alecky humor attracts many in the hothouse.
"I hang out with a lot of gardeners and gardeners have a good time, but Ilene is another kettle of fish," says Betsey Hansell of Yardley, of the Hardy Plant Society's Mid-Atlantic Group. "She's more sophisticated, she's been around, and she's funny."
Not everyone finds Sternberg such a knee-slapper. She once wrote something for a gardening organization that amused some and insulted others. It eventually was printed, but the story illustrates why garden photographer Rob Cardillo thinks Sternberg has such a ball spoofing gardeners.
"She likes to poke fun at people who take themselves too seriously," says Cardillo, who lives in Ambler. "Gardening isn't brain surgery, after all."
Sternberg pokes fun at herself, too, a way perhaps of dealing with her third bout of Lyme disease and arthritis so bad she couldn't garden this summer.
Whoops- this part was at bottom of article- ********************************************** Botanical Buffoonery
Let's get right to the funny stuff, brought to you by Ilene Sternberg.
From a review of Ian Pollard's 2007 book The Naked Gardeners, about a British couple who like to garden au naturel: "Destined to be a best seller for sure. But where do they keep their trowels?"
Titles for books Sternberg hasn't yet written:
Truly Pitiful Garden Designs
My Life as a Slug
Don't Bother Me While I'm Relaxing in My Zen Garden or I'll Kill You.
From the Morocco trip with Eve Thyrum a decade ago: The two jewelry-hunters stopped for lunch high in the Atlas Mountains, where Sternberg ended up playing pool for money in a back room with their guide and driver.
"I took the cue, chalked it up, blew on the tip, and cleared the table in one swell foop. . . . It was a proud moment, which probably didn't do much good for Muslim-American relations."
On President Bush: "In his next life he'll be an ant. Can I come back as a big foot?"
From a 2004 Wilmington News Journal column on weeds:
"My garden is now mostly plantain, knotweed, stilt grass, quack grass, ground ivy, Queen Anne's lace, clover, cinquefoil, strawberry runner vine, pokeweed, poison ivy, mile-a-minute vine, bindweed. . . . Wait. I know there's more. I'll go out and look - wood sorrel, purslane, thistle, chickweed, oxalis, pigweed, horse nettle, goose grass, nut sedge, smartweed, stupidweed - you name it. In fact, I wish I knew all their names. I just call them @#$%!)#."
And finally, some advice for gardening in the heat:
"Drink plenty of cool water. (Remember, that was water, not beer. The bodily fluid you are replenishing does not have a head on it.) Take frequent breaks.
"Better yet, stay indoors in your air-conditioned house. . . . and flip through fall catalogs for more plants to buy."