In Thrall to the Scented Geranium
Our favorite - Wind Swept Herb Farm - featured in the New York Times.
Heirloom Pelargoniums, some with hundreds of years of horticultural history, are among 2,000 kinds of plants in an herb collection in rural New Jersey.
A pot of Old Fashioned Rose scented geranium grew on the windowsill of every college dorm room that Patrick McDuffee occupied in his years studying biology at James Madison University in Virginia.
It was a plant that his grandfather, Cyrus Hyde, had introduced Patrick to at age 17, teaching him to train it as a topiary. It’s also the key ingredient in the herbal vanilla cake that his grandmother, Louise Hyde, still bakes today.
That heirloom Pelargonium, with hundreds of years of horticultural history, was a living piece of Hyde family tradition. It is one of more than 2,000 kinds of plants — including 86 other scented-leaf geraniums — that form the world-class herb collection at Well-Sweep Herb Farm, which Cyrus and Louise Hyde founded in 1969 in rural Port Murray, N.J.
Mr. McDuffee grew up in Virginia, and only visited the farm a couple of times a year back then. When he finished college in 2012, though, he and his windowsill plants relocated to join his grandparents and his uncle, David Hyde, who runs the business and has lived at Well-Sweep since age 6.
Today Mr. McDuffee, now 36 and the farm manager, has a job description nearly as diverse as the nursery’s offerings, which include not just herbs but native plants (a passion of his uncle’s), carnivorous plants (one of Mr. McDuffee’s loves) and much more.
He juggles office duties with propagating and caring for plants and managing the crew. He helps to welcome visitors daily in season, and at a couple of festival-like weekend-long events each year. At the next of those, Aug. 30 and 31, he’ll give a special “scented geranium deep-dive talk,” he said, as just one of many featured expert presenters.
Between the plants and poultry, Mr. McDuffee said, those genetics classes he took at college have really served him well.
