THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407150070
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
HE MAY BE America's most popular doctor, largely due to his soothing bedside manner.
But the beds in this case are flower beds. And he is Dr. Marc Cathey, also known as radio's Growise Gardener.
Every Saturday from 8 to 10 a.m., Cathey answers questions for the horticulturally perplexed on a call-in show originating in Washington, D.C. The program airs locally on WTAR.
How to prevent blossom end rot. How to remove ground bees by flooding them out at night. How to get wild violets out of your lawn. How to use a sponge mop and Round Up to take care of that pesky wire grass under your boxwood.
Cathey has been broadcasting for 12 years, but until four years ago he was confined to a local station. Today, he's heard on more than 200 stations from Spokane to Boston.
Tomorrow? Don't look back, Rush, somebody may be gaining on you.
WTAR, at 790 on the AM dial, was one of the first stations to pick up the Growise Gardener. Cathey says he gets more calls from Hampton Roads than from any region of the country, including his D.C. home base.
If there's a secret to Cathey's popularity, it's the way he combines a professional knowledge of plants with an over-the-back-fence feel for gardening as way of life. The mixture has roots in his own life.
Cathey has a Ph.D. from Cornell and several full careers behind him. He's held three endowed chairs in his time. ``A friend of mine says that's enough to make me a sofa.'' He's headed the National Arboretum in D.C. and now is president of the American Horticultural Society.
But in his guise as the Growise Gardener, Cathey relies less on academic expertise than on what he calls ``Carolina chitchat.'' He comes from eight generations of Davidson County Tarheels and his inspiration as a gardener came, as his listeners know well, from Miss Nanny, his grandmother.
When Cathey was a boy, Miss Nanny lived next door and her approach to the world of growing things formed his attitudes.
``She said the Burpee Seed Catalog was often more affirming to read than the Bible,'' he says. ``I once got to tell David Burpee that I learned to read mostly so I could read the Burpee Seed Catalog.''
For Miss Nanny, gardening was a practical endeavor aimed at putting food on the table. But it also had an aesthetic dimension and was, ultimately, a way of approaching life.
``It included simplicity and responsibility and many practices we'd call organic gardening today. If you could care for a plant, you could probably care for other living things. It even extended to shoes and clothing.''
Miss Nanny's garden ethic is behind the Growise Gardener's central message: ``People need beauty but need to be responsible about how they do it.''
Miss Nanny came from a branch of Cathey's family that included ``many who stayed on the farm and referred to themselves as Green People, long before the expression was fashionable.''
The Green People contrasted with a side of the family tree that included several medical doctors and military men. Their influence on Cathey was less evident at first.
``Because my father was absent in the military when I was a young man, I fell under the sway of several women, including Miss Nanny,'' he says. ``And those were important years.''
As a result, Cathey thinks, the twig was bent in directions it might not have been. ``I was never interested in sports that involved hitting or clipping people.''
Instead, ``I grew plants because I drew watercolors of flowers and birds like Mr. Audubon. To do the paintings, I had to have subjects. But the more I grew, the more I learned about plants.'' THE GREEN DOCTOR
As he approached college, it dawned on Cathey that he could reconcile the two sides of his family. ``I suddenly realized I would be a doctor - of plants!''
Today, when you call Cathey, you get the the doctor's knowledge and Miss Nanny's wisdom.
The questions most frequently asked concern ``moles and voles and all kinds of critters.'' And his advice is typically practical. ``I always recommend that people get a dog or a cat with an attitude.'' This has offended some listeners who think he's impugning their pets' gumption. He is, too.
Cathey has had celebrity callers, including Eva Gabor with a question on roses and Sen. Bob Packwood with a problem with his pachysandra. Cathey's delivery is so dry that it isn't always easy to tell when his tongue is in his cheek, but he claims the Packwood pachysandra is for real.
Cathey admits he is often stumped on the air, ``because you can't easily identify the problem if you can't see the plant. And callers aren't trained observers, or lack the vocabulary to describe the problem successfully. But the show is an education for me, too. I find out what I don't know and go and learn something new every week.'' NO TIME TO GARDEN
Ironically, the Growise Gardener doesn't have much of a garden himself. It's part of the price of fame.
``This spring I was gone 38 nights in a row, and you can't have a garden under those circumstances,'' he says. ``So I've had to reduce my own garden to the minimum.
``It's very sad to say. But I view my job now as cultivating the nation's garden. And I don't want someone else fooling around in my garden. But it's embarrassing that it's not in better shape.''
Asked about the changes he's seen in gardening over the years, he agrees that in his grandmother's day gardens were more practical. They were often kitchen gardens whereas ``today the garden is more often an oasis, a place not just of plants but of hummingbirds and songbirds and butterflies.
``There's also a greater emphasis on reducing the impact of fertilizers on bays and lakes, on what we call sustainability.'' Cathey also notes that wildflowers, for a while pushed out of the limelight by more showy flowers, ``are now returning at a great rate.''
What's his general advice for gardeners in Hampton Roads? ``They need to recall that theirs is a transitional zone. Many are trying to grow things that belong in a Savannah. They like to think they are in the deep South but they aren't.
``They are trying to grow only marginally hardy plants and can't get away with it. Furthermore, the humidity and temperatures of the region increase the risk of disease.''
Even the Peninsula and the Southside differ in regard to what plants they can sustain.
In short, gardeners must know their terrain and climate, and plant accordingly, he says.
Cathey has contributed to guides that make it easier for gardeners to know what to plant where. But when in doubt, listen to the Growise Gardener on Saturday mornings. It's the next best thing to a house call. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JAMES A. VAN SWEDEN
Though he holds a Ph.D. from Cornell, Marc Cathey relies more on
``Carolina chitchat'' than on academic expertise.
by CNB