THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210464
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 200 lines
Michael Huff was a biology student at Old Dominion University when he first discovered his passion for watching things grow.
He was taking a course that required students to collect and identify different varieties of plants.
``It really impressed me to take these little tiny flowers you see every day and put them under a microscope,'' he said. ``They just opened up with such beauty. It fascinated me.''
Huff made an ``A'' in the course and his professor pointed out that should tell him something about his future career plans. It did - although it took him a while to find just the right spot.
Once he did, he stayed. For 20 years now, Huff has been passing on his love of horticulture to teenagers attending Portsmouth's S.H. Clarke Vocational Training Center.
For almost as long, he's given many of those students work experience in his own small business, Quality Lawn and Landscape Services.
Besides giving those young people some spending money and supplementing his own teacher's salary, Huff's landscaping business has allowed him one more way of sharing the beauty and magic of working with nature.
Huff, 50, does lawn and landscaping maintenance for a couple of condominium complexes and a few small banks, too.
But Maryview Medical Center is his largest contract and he concedes it's the one that gives him the best opportunity to really pull together something beautiful.
``It's like painting a portrait in the garden, and it's really enjoyable,'' he said.
About 35 different species of flowers and plants, and just as many colors blend together, making the hospital grounds one of the city's most impressive garden spots.
But Huff still considers the landscaping a work in progress. He is gradually putting in more perennials, so that eventually he can cut back on seasonal plantings and still have something blooming throughout the year.
One of the most striking flower beds is at the entryway in the middle of a circular drive.
At about 500 square feet, the bed is filled with a breathtaking palette of colors from vivid reds and oranges to softer corals, pinks and yellows.
Flower varieties range from the purplish coneflowers to varying heights and types of lilies, plumed liatris and the smaller zinnias and dahlias. Black-eyed Susans, vinca and bluish salvia also compete for attention in the planted bouquet.
``The bottom line on Mike is we tell him we want things looking nice and we leave it up to him,'' said Donald Durkee, vice president of operations for the hospital.
``Other people who have used him have said the same thing,'' Durkee added. ``Just stay out of his way and let him do what he does best.''
In about 10 years, they've had no reason to change the relationship.
``When our nursing home was completed, they (administrators) looked at the hospital and said, `Let's get that guy out here,' '' Durkee added. ``The nursing home looks gorgeous.''
Durkee said he hopes passing through the hospital's garden areas serves to uplift or calm visitors and patients who are dealing with illnesses and the fears and other emotions that go with it.
From the messages that are passed on to him, it does.
Hospital staff members also are queried about some of the types of plants Huff has used. Eventually, the landscaper may put labels on some of the more unusual plants.
Meanwhile, he and his crew members, who are there almost every day of the week, are never too busy to talk about their work to passers-by.
Many ask about the vitex tree with its purplish blooms that hang umbrella style. Huff is also asked often about the moonbeam, a delicate, lemon-colored flower, one of two varieties of coreopsis he's used in the cross bed.
Jacquelyn Forehand, the hospital's lobby greeter, has fielded her share of questions.
``I just had someone remarking about the landscaping as I came up the elevator today,'' she said. ``People really seem to enjoy it.''
She tries to keep notes on those flowers that are blooming for use when Huff and his employees are not around. Like the horticulturist, she has also found the vitex tree to be one that people are most curious about.
But when a flower or plant catches their interest, Forehand says, people will ``stand there and just stare and stare.'' Patients waiting for tests or family members who need a quiet place to restore their spirits seem to find their way to the hospital's garden area, she said.
Forehand knows how they feel. She hears the same kind of comments from employees.
``A lot of them don't have access to windows and when they get a break, they will come out (to the second floor) and just look down and it kind of gives them peace of mind,'' she said.
Like Huff's students, they may have sensed a peace in Huff's world that he does not deny. He admits that he gets a sense of awe from watching seeds grow and take on life and beauty.
``I've seen students that have just become in a sense more peaceful, just by being able to do something like that,'' said Huff.
He likes watching that process, even seeing the reaction of students who come into his class who have never even put their hands in the dirt. He gives them a supply of humus and peat moss and tells them to wet it down and work it with their hands so it's evenly mixed.
``Once they get their hands in it, they're not going to be able to take them out,'' he said. ``There's a certain texture and feel about touching it - the sponginess and warmth.''
It's the same comfort Huff gets from gardening - something he describes as nothing short of a religious experience.
``You're more in touch with all of creation once you can put your hands into the soil and just feel the life energy, I think,'' he said. ``A person that really can do that has an experience above and beyond anything that you can experience in the man-made world.''
And there's an equal satisfaction in watching students come to that same realization.
After college graduation in the early 1970s, Huff first worked for the city's parks department and became superintendent of parks. When he decided he wanted to teach, he first taught chemistry, biology and math at a private school in Elizabeth City.
But the Chesapeake resident tired of the commute and turned down a contract for the next year without another job. He remembers standing in the parking lot of that private school, saying a little prayer that he would end up where he was supposed to be.
In 20 years, he's never doubted that's what happened when he was hired to teach horticulture at Clarke. Since then he's been offered positions with the Norfolk Botanical Garden and CBN University. He could put more energy into his business.
He's vetoed all of those options to continue passing on what he knows to another generation. He and his students over the years have turned the Clarke's back yard into a horticultural haven with greenhouses and walkways that are lined with a large variety of trees and shrubs, a rose beds and other flowers beds.
Initially, the horticulture program was one of the vocational training choices offered teenagers who had fallen more than two grades behind in school.
Huff also taught many of the students who had gotten into trouble in other schools and ended up in alternative educa tion classes also housed at Clarke at one time.
The teacher has had his share of students who had exasperated other teachers. He figures maybe he looked at those students differently, though.
``I think it was a matter of accepting them for who they were and not putting them down,'' said Huff. ``I think maybe I saw them in just a different light.''
A few years ago, his classes were opened citywide to any student interested in learning about horticulture and students were bused in for either a morning or afternoon class.
At the end of the first year students can be certified by the Virginia Greenhouse Grower's Association as greenhouse operators. After a second year, they have enough training to go after pesticide certification and the Virginia Nurseryman's Association cer-tifi-ca-tion.
Last year, the upcoming conversion of Clarke to an elementary school meant even more changes to the school. Trade programs were phased out and, after the fall semester, nursing students were moved to Wilson High School.
That left - besides a secretary, custodian and construction crew responsible for renovations - only Huff and his students who came in from other schools.
Now the horticulture teacher is gearing up for even more change, as he prepares to bring the garden to the classroom for elementary age children. He'll also continue to get the older students bused in on a daily basis and he plans to use second-year students to mentor the children.
Recently he attended a world symposium in California on innovative ways to use gardening and horticulture to teach children everything from science and history to math.
``It's pretty much a movement, I think,'' he said. ``I think people are becoming a lot more aware of their environment and surroundings and nature in general.''
He's excited about the prospect of showing children the joy of watching something they have cared for come to life.
It's the same kind of reward Huff describes when he talks about the students he's watched come along.
He's especially proud of 22-year-old Kevin Culpepper, who Huff is grooming to take over the bulk of his business in the future.
Several years ago, Culpepper was a metal trades student who didn't like what he was learning enough to come to school on a regular basis. An assistant principal asked Huff to try the student in his class a couple of weeks.
``Kevin had this energy,'' Huff remembered. ``He had to constantly be doing something.''
Huff kept him busy, and Culpepper seemed to take naturally to the work.
Now the teacher has watched him grow up and become a responsible right-hand man in his business.
``He's never missed a day of work in the time he's been with me,'' said Huff. ``He's a real capable young man. I'm proud of him like I would be if he was my son.''
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Jim Walker
Landscaper Michael Huff works in the palette of color he planted in
the entryway to Maryview Medical Center.[color cover photo]
Herbie Morgan, 17, one of Huff's horticulture students, works part
time during the summer for his teacher's landscaping company.
The entryway at Maryview Medical Center is a color palette that
patients, visitors and employees find comforting.
Michael Huff tends to the flowers at Maryview. He decribes his work
as religious experience. "you're more in touch with all creation
once you can put your hands into the soil and just feel the life
energy," he said.
Cheerful colors welcome visitors to the Maryview Medical Arts
Building, above, while purplish coneflowers, below, add variety to
bed.
by CNB