Pittsfield woman grows 100-plus kinds of flowers

PITTSFIELD – Pamela “Pam” Culver, a city native, proudly showed a moon flower that grows in her backyard.

“This opens at night and dies the next day,” she said. “It’s the opposite of a morning glory.”

The large, white, showy flowers make a spectacular sight in the garden at night.

Mrs. Culver can tell you a thing or two about flowers. She grows more than 100 varieties in her backyard, which is just under an acre.

A 60-year-old orchid cactus with long green fronds grew in her mother’s garden and is still thriving, nurtured by Mrs. Culver’s green thumb.

Asked if her late mother also grew flowers and veggies, her eyes got big and she said, “Are you kidding me? She made her own ketchup!

“My love of plants came directly from my mother,” Mrs. Culver said.

She walked along many flower beds in the yard and talked in detail about their leafy residents.

“These are Japanese lanterns,” she said, pointing out the flowers that look like miniature jack-o-lanterns.  She uses them in floral bouquets and arrangements that she makes.

Flower looks like a cardinal

“And this is lobelia cardinal,” Mrs. Culver said, holding a small, brilliant red flower between her thumb and index finger. It does, indeed, remarkably like the red bird it’s named after.

She didn’t plant the lobelia cardinal. It probably arrived in the garden wildly in the droppings of a bird, she said, and grew from there.

She pointed out the lady slipper, part of the orchid family, that is endangered, as well as jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium and maximillian sunflowers.

“They keep pumping out,” she said of the latter. The big yellow flowers with dark centers make stunning additions to floral bouquets.

As for peonies, Mrs. Culver started with six plants and now has 30 in three shades of pink plus white with a splash of red in the middle.

Tomatillos in guacamole

She snapped off a green tomatillo, native to Mexico and used extensively in that cuisine. She peeled the green lantern shaped outer covering and inside was the green tomatillo.

Tomatillos are similar to tomatoes. Mrs. Culver uses them in her homemade guacamole.

Pretty pink lavateras are from England, she said. She also has dahlias and hibiscus. Some of her many roses came from varieties she bought at the supermarket and then planted.

Mrs. Culver has also mastered growing persnickety gardenias and African violets. The former love moist air, she said. They cannot stand being dried out either but one cannot water them too much or the roots will rot.

“Most flowers don’t mind cold air,” she said. “They prefer it to be 60 and not 90 degrees.”

She prides herself on the nasturtiums she grows. They come in sizzling orange and sunny yellow. She gives lots of them away as gifts in bright red plastic cups. The whole colorful combination makes a delightful gift.

Use pergola until late fall

Mrs. Culver showed a Beacon interviewer the pergola in the backyard, which she and her husband, James A. “Jim” Culver, enjoy through late falls.

“From April through October, I’m outside,” she said. Her flowers need her, after all.

She leads visitors past the apple, cherry, pear and plum trees her husband planted and also jokes about his veggie garden.

“He’s got green beans growing up the corn and the rest are weeds,” she laughed. He also has lots of tomatoes growing in pots on a deck.

The home she shares with her husband belonged to his family. It was a four-room cottage and they put an addition on it. When Mr. Culver’s parents lived there, they kept chickens and pigs. As a result, “even my weeds are robust,” Mrs. Culver said.

Mr. Culver’s late mother used to grow raspberries, which were used to make filling for donuts in a local donut shop, Mrs. Culver said.

Makes flower crafts

In addition to growing flowers, Mrs. Culver makes all kinds of crafts using her blooms. A stack of telephone books is a testimony to old-fashioned pressing methods. Some of the blossoms are very fragile and take immense patience to press.

Mrs. Culver has made greeting cards, photo frames, decorative balls for weddings and first babies and even light switches, using dried, pressed flowers.

It’s exacting work, as she does the arranging first and then puts flower designs together with tiny dabs of glue on the end of a toothpick.

She also makes small prayer cards with floral hearts on the fronts. These are made in duplicate. When a person requests Mrs. Culver to pray for an intention, she gives them one of the cards. Then, she keeps the identical one on a windowsill in her kitchen as a reminder to pray for that person.

Lifelong love of flowers

She’s been working with flowers for years. She laughs when she says, “I’m 161 years old.”

Mrs. Culver used to do craft fairs but found most people are unable or unwilling to pay the prices that handmade floral items command. It takes a great deal of effort, patience and time to create floral crafts.

She’s been known to make floral bouquets for weddings, too, and often donates her work.

“I give away as much as I sell, and that makes me happy,” she said.

Being out in her garden brings Mrs. Culver great joy.

“There’s an inner peace that comes from being out in the fresh air,” she said.

Whenever someone tells her, “You do nice work,” it lifts up her spirit.

The Culvers share their home with Casey, a 14-year-old Sheltie poodle.

When she’s not out in the garden or making crafts or bouquets with the flowers she grows, Mrs. Culver can probably be found at Berkshire Medical Center. She worked in the pharmacy there as a processor for a total of 28 years and now works in the laboratory.

Her husband is also employed by BMC, and the couple has two grown sons.

Anyone who would like to buy her pressed flower greeting cards, photo frames or other crafts can call her directly at (413) 442-6420.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on September 20, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry