or “How it all began…”

For as long as I can remember, my mother actively encouraged me to pursue a career. She was a librarian, editor and writer. She did everything in her power to ensure that I prepared myself for a career in a field suited for me. She suggested teaching. She suggested marketing and sales. She suggested writing. She even hinted at art and fashion or library work. Nothing appealed. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. As a teen, the only thing I really wanted were romantic experiences, the kind I read about in books and magazines.

I did go to college where I studied English and history, the most romantic subjects I could think of. At the end of my sophomore year, I left school, moved into an apartment with three other girls and took a job in a book store. A year later I married.

After our first child was born I decided Mother was wrong. I didn’t need a career, my destiny was to be a wife and mother. Not only that, I told myself, but I would be the best one possible! That vow eventually led to a project that changed my life forever.

After seven years of marriage, three children and several cats, we bought our first home, an old farm house on an acre of land backed with 80 acres of conservation land. We loved our house. We stripped old paint, sanded floors, repainted and papered. We acquired two ducks, six chickens, gerbils and more cats.

One winter, while the children and I were reading Beatrix Potter’s PETER RABBIT, I had an inspiration. Let’s try to grow the plants we were reading about! The children would benefit in so many ways: The stories would come alive because the children would be able to see, taste, and smell the herbs and vegetables we met in them. Gardening would be a lesson in responsibility for living things. They would learn respect for the farmers who grew the food we ate. We could study botany, learn how people lived in “the olden days”, and have lots of summer fun with very little out-of-pocket expense.

Certainly, I reasoned, a responsible parent would spend time teaching her children how to garden and be good stewards of the earth, even if that parent didn’t know much herself. After all, a person could learn. As the daughter of a librarian, I knew a trip to the library would supply me with all the books I would need to become a competent gardener.

Our first garden included lettuces, radishes, peas, parsley and camomile for Peter Rabbit, plus pumpkins for Halloween. The vegetables thrived in our piece of old farmyard. I was thrilled.

Totally entranced with the visual beauty of lettuce heads and the scent of camomile, I read everything I could lay my hands on about gardening. I fell madly, passionately in love with the fragrance, form, flavors and history of herbs and flowers. I’m not sure the children ever received the benefits from that first garden I hoped they would, but their mother sure did!

The family garden quickly grew from a small patch to a large plot. I decided to grow all the vegetables we would need to get us through the winter. I learned how to can and freeze. More and more herbs were added to the vegetable garden, especially basil, dill and parsley. We began giving neighbors extra zucinni and tomatoes.

A friend suggested selling the extra produce to our local grocery store. To my amazement, the produce manager bought a bushel of tomatoes and several bunches of basil and parsley. The next year the grocery store wanted more home-grown, organic vegetables along with basil, dill, chives and parsley. I was excited, not only did I love the growing and selling but the money I earned was a stay-at-home-mothers’ dream come true. Now there was a bit extra to spend on special treats for the family. I had found a way to stay at home AND contribute to the family income!

The step from growing vegetables and herbs to growing herbs and dried flowers was a short one. Unable to convince my husband to buy a farm so the produce production could expand, I realized that many herbs had flowers that dried nicely. Herbs and herbal flowers took up less growing space than tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, had a longer shelf life, and yielded a greater profit . I also discovered that many of the common weeds growing along the roadsides were really escaped herbs important to early New England settlers. Here was a whole new area waiting to be explored and harvested!

That fall I packed our station wagon with bunches of dried herbs and flowers and set up shop at Saturday flea markets. The kids helped sell. It was lots of fun and pretty successful. The day we sold $50 worth of drieds, I felt we had made a fortune! We celebrated that night with Chinese food for the whole family.

Life settled into an orderly and, for me, satisfying pattern. I spent winters researching the history and uses of herbs. Spring was planting time, summer we harvested, and in autumn we took our bunches of decorative drieds to flea markets. I felt as if I had discovered the key to a magical place. The year made sense. It had meaning, balance and structure. I was actually living with the seasons and had the additional gift of being surrounded with fragrant leaves and beautiful flowers.

The business and gardens grew. Customers asked me to arrange the dried flowers. They brought containers for me to fill. I wasn’t a flower arranger, I was a flower grower. I politely refused. That didn’t stop the requests so I decided to learn flower arranging. The business grew again. Soon I had an employee and an urgent need for more space. Garden clubs called with requests for workshops and lectures. Brides inquired about weddings. Classes and wedding work were added to the increasing services my home and garden based business offered.

Once again I suggested we move to a farm. Instead of moving, we built a two story building in back of the garage for my workshop. I planted gardens around it and hired more employees. Before long we had a direct mail catalog and more customers then our zoning board was comfortable with. It was time to move the retail part of the business off the property.

Sixteen years after my flash of inspiration, we opened a retail shop, “Betsy Williams, the Proper Season”, in downtown Andover. The shop focused on the five seasons of the year: spring, summer, fall, winter, and Christmas. We celebrated high and low feast and festival days related to the seasons and the gardening activities that accompanied each season.

The dried flower wreaths and arrangements that filled the walls and shelves of our retail shop were created in our workshop by a staff of six talented designers. We sold our products on a retail and wholesale basis to customers and herb shops around the country. I created all the displays in the shop, designed and tended the shop garden, wrote articles for herb and gardening magazines, managed the business, developed and taught a regular series of classes, did fresh flower designs for weddings and events, produced a quarterly newsletter and lectured to garden clubs and professional groups.

My mother had been absolutely correct! Not only did I need a career but I had found a great one, and in doing so became skilled in all the areas she believed I might do well in. Despite my strong rejection of her accurate observations and wise suggestions, I had become a teacher, writer, salesman, merchandiser and artist as well as a gardener, businesswoman, and storyteller. The librarian part?? Well, I didn’t quite become a librarian, but over the years I ‘ve ordered, shelved, recommended and sold enough books to feel like one.

In the 35 years since I planted that first fragrant camomile for Peter Rabbit I have gone from being a young wife and mother to being an old wife and grandmother of seven, but I have never lost the wonder, curiosity and passion that herbs inspire in me. They are sturdy, humble, useful plants that have served mankind well since long before written history. Every leaf and flower has stories to tell; stories that trace the development of human civilization. Herbs carry the story of humankind in their quiet green leaves. The story of humankind is our story and, for me, that story is endlessly intoxicating.