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Community Corner

Mt. Horeb Property Draws Fans Like Bees

Mt. Horeb Road resident Bill Newkirk's flowers create a spectacle of colors from early spring to the fall.

It is not unusual for strangers to show up on Bill Newkirk’s Mt. Horeb Road doorstep, asking to photograph his garden.  After all, over the past 30 years, Newkirk has planted more than 35,000 flower bulbs on his 2-acre property that explode in brilliant color each year.

 “I can plant 500 bulbs in an hour,” he says.

 And that’s by hand.   Daffodils, tulips, gladiolas, irises, daylilies… you name it, he’s got it.  Not to mention other flowering plants such as grape hyacinths, hydrangeas, peonies, azaleas, monkshood, phlox and evening primrose.   

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 “I look forward to spring,” he says.  “To have the flowers come up and to be able to get into my garden is pure joy.”

 If you live in Warren (and even if you don’t), you probably know the place.  The charming, white 1850’s colonial farmhouse on a heavily trafficked intersection with five wooden daffodils looming 6-feet tall over thousands of real ones.

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 “People drive by and yell and thank me for doing this,” says Newkirk, 68.  “Or they’ll slow down or stop.”

 Take, for example, the grandmother who stopped to ask if she could photograph her granddaughters in front of the wooden daffodils.  Or the annual visit by a class of Warren Middle School students eager to test their photography skills. And the mother of a bride who requested to use Newkirk’s garden as a backdrop for wedding photos, in place of a previously selected site.

 The son of a South Jersey dairy farmer, Newkirk has lived in Warren for 33 years with his wife, Arlene.  He took early retirement 18 years ago from his job as an IT specialist.  And what began as a hobby blossomed into a full-time labor of love.

 “I enjoy working outside,” he says. 

 “The garden is his baby,” says his wife.

 When not gardening, Newkirk enjoys woodworking, cooking and amateur photography, using… you guessed it… his flowers as willing subjects.

Some years yield more blooms than others.   One flower bed that bulged with more than 1,000 tulips last year has just 250 this spring.  But then, tulip bulbs are somewhat fickle in New Jersey, according to Newkirk, who says a gardener is lucky to get more than a year or two of tulip splendor with any particular bulb. Yet, elsewhere in the yard, certain daffodils planted in the early 1980s flourish year after year in delicate yellow and white hues.  

Each fall, Newkirk plants several hundred more daffodils and several thousand tulips, while digging up, splitting and reusing some existing bulbs. The tulips, and other foliage on which deer like to munch, are netted or fenced in. 

And, while April and May find his garden at its most spectacular, the assortment of other flowering plants, blooming at different times, ensure that the Newkirks will have a palette of color throughout the summer and into the autumn.

There are flowering apple and cherry trees, lilac bushes and honeysuckle vines.   More than 300 goldfish swim in the larger of two ponds.  There are raspberries and strawberries, tomatoes and lima beans, and lots of other fruits and vegetables that Newkirk grows hydroponically in a greenhouse and specially raised beds.

But it is Newkirk’s glorious springtime floral display for which he is best known throughout the community.  Begging the question, does his Dutch ancestry make him genetically-predisposed to being able to create the perfect tulip? 

Newkirk politely demurs, pointing to a row of regal red tulips and giving credit instead to the way the afternoon sun backlights the blooms against his white lattice fence.

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