George Ball - Deceitful, Greedy, Inept?

Those are just a few of the words used to describe George Ball - former president of the American Horticultural Society, no less - for his treatment of that beloved horticultural gem of the Northwest, Heronswood Nursery.  This GardenRant writer simply offers this article in today's New York Times - thanks to several tipsters - and solicits reader reactions.  Anyone want to defend the guy?

One comment I can't pass up, though.  Upon reading that Ball is looking for a rich man to buy Heronswood for his gardening wife, my feminist self and gardener self are duking it out to see who's more pissed off at the guy.

Comments

[ginger]

Gee, I wish I had won that latest 300+ million...

As for Mr. Ball, he is a businessman and profit, whether the horticultural community likes it or not, comes first. Dan Hinkley is really one of my heroes with all of his work in the horticulture industry with new introductions but he made quite a tidy profit himself and so he should!

[Ellis Hollow]

The money quote for me:

"At Christmas, Burpee landed on The Seattle Times’s 'naughty' list along with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il."

I'd love to hear a Jim Ward (Stephanie Miller's 'Voice Guy Extraordinaire') rant on that.

[Trey]

The public backlash should be far more troubling to Mr. Ball than the inability to sell the property. Mr. Ball heads up an old school business that is living in the past. While its shear size and long history will allow a company like W. Atlee Burpee & Company to continue on its merry way, this type of public relations fiasco may in the future spell the doom for a younger businesses built on good customer relations and trust. Mr. Ball has destroyed a good deal of the public trust of his business.

[Michelle Derviss]

Mr. Ball bought the property from Mr. Hinkley for 4.5 mil.
Mr. Ball is a businessman and the business that he wanted to establish on this piece of property was not successful due to a variety of factors.

Mr. Ball approached the former owner, Mr. Hinkley and asked if he would like to purchase the property back at 60 % LESS than the price for which he had originally purchased it for.

Mr. Hinkley kindly refused. He has moved on to another chapter in his life. In his own words he had said that " the responsibility of the nursery and grounds had become oppressive .

I ask you, what is a businessman suppose to do now ?
He tried in good faith and at a substantial financial loss to return the property to its former owner.
Is he expected to sit on a piece of property that is not returning a profit on its investment ?
That is just poor economical business management.

How many people , no matter what their economic status can afford to hold on to a business or a piece of property that is draining the bank account ?

This lovely old horticultural treasure is caught in an emotional tug of war by the local horticultural community.
This is totally understandable and it pulls at anyones heartstrings who have an appreciation for fine horticultural treasures.

If the local horticultural troop(s) want to win this battle they are going to have to become less emotional and more business savvy.
They have a formidable opponent, but one that has previously shown that he does have a sense of compassion towards this piece of land, otherwise he would not have offered it back to Mr. Hinkley for 60 % less than what was originally paid for the grounds.

[Verdant Heart]

Perhaps Geo Ball is a business man. Perhaps. But I have to question his business acumen when he buys a business who's success is largely due to the personality of it's owners and the climate of the area. What was the business plan? Obviously not totally thought through.

"Mr. Ball, who has compared Burpee to a Ford and Heronswood to a Jaguar, said he could not turn a profit on his new brand. The Burpee research director, Grace C. Romero, said many potential customers found the Heronswood catalog, with its Latin names, impenetrable." This says a lot. He bought a Jag and tried to sell it to Ford owners! Geesh!

To try to put a somewhat kindly light on it, I suspect Mr. Ball bought Heronswood on a romantic, perhaps egotistical, whim. Being a big name in the green industry it had to appeal to him to own a Jag. Something that fairly reeked of quality and status. He made a decision of the heart and fell flat on his face covered in egg. Surely he knew the negative fallout from this. It's somewhat redeeming that he has offered to sell it to the Pacific Northwest Horticultural Conservancy for the same price he offered to Hinckley.

"He has not given up hope, saying, “You never know where an angel is going to come from.”" An angel to come and save HIM from himself. Clarence I think it'll be a long time before he earns his own wings.

Cheers… Verdant Heart

[The County Clerk]

This dog shouldn't hunt. I can't figure out why it is. Are we all REALLY so entitled? Are we so simple as to blame EVERYTHING on "corporations." Is it so bad to make a buck?

I notice things for sale on THIS blog. Hopefully these are not offered at a loss. And I seem to remember a "tip jar."

All of these things are fine of course. I like this site. But... so we can all agree, the concept of NOT LOSING MONEY is a good one, right? More important, the concept of trying to make money is also good.

If anyone is the bad guy here (and I'm not sure anyone is) it would be Mr. Hinkley. He sold his business, demured on buying it back (at a discount) and then claims the buyers "vulgarized" it.

That's brazen.

It was (AND IS) perfectly fine for Hinkley to make a nice profit and wash his hands of the cumbersome obligations but it is NOT OK for Burpee to do the same?

And Burpee is being villified? Crazy.

If "The People" want Heronswood to be a public park, someone should come up with the scratch and buy it. The city. An organized trust. Something. And $9 million... in Seattle the land of tech millionaires and BILLIONAIRES... get 50 people together on El Gaucho, serve some gourmet snacks and hold out a freakin' hat.

Or better yet, start an Internet fund. This way, people ALL OVER can contribute (the same people ALL OVER who are complaining). Maybe GardenRant should spearhead this. If people won't give, they can keep their indignation as tighly buttoned up as their wallets. If they DO give, problem solved.

This is a non-issue. Worse. It is negative publicity blackmail against a company that has no obligation (moral or otherwise) to provide a park to anyone.

My big regret is that I don't have the $9 million + operating cash. I LOVE Seattle. My best friends are there. It is a special place. I'm planning on a second place there within the year. And I'd hate to see Heronswood go away permamnetly. But this is ridiculous. What is going on with Americans today?

(How's that for a rant!) :)

[Ellis Hollow]

I'll admit that I don't know all the details of the case, but didn't Burpee pay $9 million for the entire business (which included the property)? Now, what they're selling back is just the property.

The business, I'm assuming, included many rare and potentially (commercially) valuable plants and the existing customer base (a very valuable business asset). Isn't that what Burpee wanted, not just the land? They've extracted a good deal of the value of the purchase, even if it didn't work out for them commercially.

I was more hopeful than sad when Burpee bought Heronswood. I thought they will take the best of the plants that only circulated among Hinkley's cult customer base and use their corporate power to bring them to the masses. As someone pointed out above, maybe selling Jags to Ford owners (hey, I drive a Ranger) wasn't such a good business plan.

So Burpee took over a smaller company with some attractive assets without thinking it through. Now they're stuck without a good exit strategy. And now 'the people' need to bail them out.

Sounds familiar.

[The County Clerk]

Ellis... I don't think the people need to bail anyone out. And to extend the auto metaphor ad absurdum, Jaguar was losing money when Ford bought 'em. And the Jag technology was seriously flawed. (I own two and have owned several so I'm not Jag-bashing.) Ford bought jag but then STOPPED building the same kind of jags. Hell, you can buy a $33K baby jag today... and the high end XKRs are now eirily similr to the Astons (another Ford acquistion). And guess what: Original Jaguar facilities and staff are GONE.

No one is looking for a bail out. Burpee isn't crying. They are just saying that Heronswood is on the block. And here's the price.

And if the title of THIS blog is any indication, that makes Burpee and Ball decietful and greedy. Absurd. And Seattle puts him on the naughty list. Absurd.

If "the people" want Heronswood to stay open as some kind of a public access thing, "the people" will have to make it happen.

The NYT article quoted a woman who was upset "because she'd come to rely on Heronswoood as a source of Inspiration."

Well... OK. But who says anyone has a financial obligation to inspire anyone else?

It isn't Burpee's obligation. And the leader of Burpee should not be villified.

Honestly, the title of this Rant is

"George Ball - Deceitful, Greedy, Inept?"

Yeah, I see the question mark.

It is really QUITE appalling. Irresponsible and appalling.

[Michele Owens]

I'm with the County Clerk on this one. I've got no sentimental attachment to Heronswood--they're on the other side of the USA, where the gardening is easy-peasy. I'd no sooner order from them than I'd order from the U.K.

So I've always read the Heronswood story this way: Founder sells business for a pile of money to a vulgarian--a crass decision unworthy of the business he's built and the loyalty of his customers. And then complains about what happens to his business. Sorry--maybe the man is a great plantsman, but he's no angel.

[Susan Harris]

My reaction was actually close to Michele's and the Clerk's, also. When I read that Hinckley had declined to buy it back for 60 percent of what he'd received for it, I decided it's a local issue that I just don't get.

[Renee]

I can sympathize with mourning a lost garden, but Heronswood was a creation of Dan Hinkley, and Dan sold it. There's a saying that a garden does not outlive the gardener. (Near the end of her life, Beatrix Farrand supervised the demo of her beautiful Mt Desert garden, rather than let nature take its course.) I know the Garden Conservancy is trying to disprove the saying, but gardens do change over time, and Hinkley's decision to sell accelerated that for Heronswood. George Ball isn't doing himself or Burpee any favors, but the local folks need to buy the property if they think it deserves the very high maintenance that it requires, before it's blackberries again. Sorry, but even the most glorious gardens are ephemeral.

[Rick Anderson]

I agree with the Clerk, Michele, and Susan. The former owner took the money and ran off.

It's about the MONEY!!! Ball couldn't have bought it, if it wasn't for sale.

Hinckley has a problem---he shouldn't have sold it. I don't get it either. If you have to have a bad guy (seems the American way)then Hinckley is the bad guy.

[Hap]

This seems to be nothing more than a play of characters in a very bad opera. Having met Dan I can say he has a scary sort of charisma, that built him a loyal following. But like so many other commenters I have to say, he did sell his nursery and sell for a lot of money to a large corporate buyer. Since I don't know the details of the agreement of the sale I find it odd that he felt he had the right to complain how things were handled, if he wanted to protect the longevity of Heronswood it should have been part of the sales contract.

George Ball is an odd, often misspoken CEO and has over the years made very strange business decisions.... I have never understood why he would want Heronswood in the first place, it was a specialty nursery that focused on all of us "rabid gardeners" and not something that could be taken mainstream or the plants that did so well in the northwest marketed to the rest of the country. And I can't see how it could carry a debt load of almost five million dollars and ever turn a profit.

As far as the nursery and garden I hope that it can be saved but at the cost I think it is unlikely. There are so many heritage gardens that should be bought, maintained and put in to public trusts that I find the whole Heronswood mess detracting from all the local gardens and collections that we should all be working to preserve.

[Annie in Austin]

I met George Ball once for about 5 minutes, when standing in line at a bookstore with a garden magazine [perhaps it was Horticulture?] in my hands. GB came up and introduced himself, told me how delighted he was to see me buying the magazine and we chatted about Illinois gardening for a while.

Maybe George Ball really thought he could do it? His announcement letter from last year is still posted at Plant Delights.

http://www.plantdelights.com/New/twilight.html

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[bev]

Well, at first I was with the "deceitful, etc" crowd, but y'all have made me think. However, when I read the announcement of the closing some months ago in the AHS magazine, I thought it said Dan H. was still working at Heronswood, and he and his staff had literally been locked out one day with no notice. I suspect there are facts in this situation to which we are not privy. But I still won't buy anything from Burpee anymore; at the very least it was a dumb business decision to buy it if he couldn't run it. He knew what he was getting, sophisticated catalog and all.

[Ellis Hollow]

Yes, I suspect there is much we don't know.

Do we know if Hinkley put the nursery on the market or if Burpee approached him? It's like the real estate agents say, there's no such thing as a house that's not for sale. If you knock on the front door and make a high enough offer, it doesn't matter whether or not there is a for sale sign in the yard.

I guess I've come not to care so much about who is at fault. It's just that something valuable has been lost. Maybe Hinkley's business wasn't sustainable. But what's happened is at least awkward.

CC: I wasn't trying to stretch the auto analogy. I appreciate the history lesson. I didn't know any of that. My point simply was that Burpee's customers just didn't want Hinkley's plants -- maybe for good reason.

[Pixydish]

I was sent a link to this forum by a friend of mine who knows I was disgusted by how the whole Heronswood fiasco went down. It would probably help if people on this forum had a little more information about this topic. It's not so much that Mr. Ball chose to close Heronswood, it's how he did it and how he insulted the entire Northwest Gardening community in the process. No one begrudges a business person the right to a profit in a capitalist society. But when you own something that is not only a regional treasure, but a national treasure as well, it shows a certain amount of class to bring your intentions forward in an honorable way and line up buyers in advance, at least. It's not a 'requirement', but it should be. The property has a modest three bedroom house on it and has operated as a commercial property for years. According to Mr. Ball, "losing" commercial property. So a potential buyer isn't really buying a business is he? I'm sure he would not be allowed to propogate the plant material and sell it. As such, the property is way overpriced and there it sits. I don't think Mr. Ball is making any money on it right now. Except maybe in big tax breaks.
Here's a link to a long thread on another website where this topic is discussed in depth. It's important to put the article referenced in this forum into the proper context.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/609256/

And here is a link to an editorial Ball wrote shortly after the closing. It ran in a Seattle newspaper.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/280018_heronswood04.html

Please note that the house on the Heronswood property is a modest 3 bedroom ranch.

Here's my rant that I posted on the Dave's Garden website after reading this article. Note I was still in the fresh passion of anger about the closing. I had been at Heronswood buying hydrangeas just 2 weeks or so before it closed. There was no indication at all that it would be closing. I would have bought much more if I had known it would be my last trip to Heronswood. I felt lucky that the cashier offered one of the wonderful catalogs produced during the Dan Hinkley years. She did this because I had asked some horticultural information about one of the plants I bought, noting that the new catalog had nothing of value in it compared to the old ones. I now keep that as a reference.

Here's my rant in response to the Seattle PI editorial. As posted on Dave's Garden:

And now that I have read this article, I cannot stop myself from responding to it, even as part of me laughs hysterically.

My favorite quote from this article: "With help from area resources, I propose to save Heronswood Gardens as the botanical treasure that it is...". Am I to understand that he is leading the charge to save the garden? Gosh, that's certainly not the way it looks. It looks like he's got the property up for sale, and unless the folks who want to save it come up with 11million dollars, it will go to anyone else who can. I thought the Garden Conservancy approached him, not the other way around. My mistake. He really IS a hero!

Sorry. Now for the rest of my response to this article.

First, Mr. Ball appears to be obsessed with wealth. I'm not sure how he is making any connection between Heronswood and his 'McMansions'. I cannot understand how this has anything at all to do with the issue at hand.

Second, I was at Heronswood myself just 3 weeks before it closed and there was no part of the garden that I could see that was damaged by storms any time recently. There was a fallen tree, possibly that fell during one of the wind storms of last winter, but it had been very cleverly made into a planting wall for bromeliads. I walked around the entire garden. I don't know what he is talking about.

Third, he is really showing his ignorance of the local area by referring to 'concern around Seattle', and the "Seattle market'. Earth to Mr. Ball: the nursery is in Kingston on the Kitsap peninsula. That is NOT Seattle, and the market is not a "Seattle Market". If this garden were actually in Seattle, then the 11 milliion asking price would be more understandable. Also, I'm not sure he is correct that he could have sold the property 'piecemeal'. The zoning in that area may have kept that from happening. It certainly put the lid on his plans for developing the land into condos surrounded by gardens. (Give me a break!)

Fourth, The fact that he offered to sell the nursery back to Dan in 2003 has nothing whatever to do with the current chain of events. Hinkley had already bought another piece of property. Bringing it up again is only a distraction tactic.

Another diversionary tactic is his reference to other high priced properties currently on the market, such as Prince Bandar's holiday residence in Aspen. HUH? Let me get this straight: because there are all of these high priced pieces of property belonging to extremely wealthy individuals on the market, and in areas known to have extremely inflated real estate costs, he thinks his pricetag of 11million is justified? Am I the only person who is in the dark regarding the logic of this?

And then he makes reference to the Bible's 'lilies of the field'. Oh Please!! He says, "its world-famous plants require little effort, yet yield stunning results". Right. That's why there were always so many of those Heronistas doing things like dividing plants, grooming plants, moving plants, etc. Oh, and then all the water garden stuff - I guess that takes care of itself, too. Does this man actually grow anything himself??? There is no possible way that one person could keep up with this garden. There would have to be a staff of gardeners.

Then, again we are privy to this man's alleged paradigm for a 'new rethinking' (isn't that redundant?) of wealth: the size and breadth of a garden would define the magnificence of a property. I see. So this must be marketing speak for: "Sorry the house on this property is so small and unassuming. I know someone as rich as you would be expecting to have a really big mansion, but don't worry, future buyer, since our new paradigm of wealth is that it is defined by the garden, not by the living structure, you can be sure no one will think you are poor." Spin doctors, you have met your match!

And now Heronswood would become a "watershed in the philosophy of residential planning"?????? Does he even have a clue about his market in Kingston? It is primarily a rural area. RURAL. That means farms, stick built and modular and mobile homes on acreage, plus the occasional cookie-cutter development. Oh. I forgot. He thought he was in Seattle. Earth to Burpee: Washington is a huge state. We have lots of towns. Not all of them are in Seattle.

I'm so pleased that he is able to reassure Seattle gardeners that he is doing everything possible to maintain the Heronswood property. I certainly hope he is able to do the same for the gardeners who live in Kingston. And Port Orchard, and Tacoma, and Gig Harbor, etc.

That's my rant.

[Michelle Derviss]

As I mentioned previously,
Less emotion and more business savvy is going to win the day.

I never knew that Heronswood was registered as a National Treasure.

[Pixydish]

FYI: here's the definition of 'rant' thanks to Dictionary.com.

rant /rænt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rant] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used without object) 1. to speak or declaim extravagantly or violently; talk in a wild or vehement way; rave: The demagogue ranted for hours.
–verb (used with object) 2. to utter or declaim in a ranting manner.
–noun 3. ranting, extravagant, or violent declamation.
4. a ranting utterance.

[bev]

I hope I am not violating any copyrights by quoting the following excerpt from Mr. Ball's statement in the Seattle newspaper:

"With the proper leadership, Heronswood Gardens could be turned into a landmark of the public garden education movement sweeping the nation, combining the arts, history, geography and science in a wonderful setting."

Excellent idea - so good, in fact, that he should DONATE the property to the public realm as a botanical garden, along with an endowment to ensure its upkeep. Burpee would get a great tax deduction, Mr. Ball MIGHT repair his reputation, and we would retain a gem for the public.

[Christopher C in Hawaii]

Making a profit can be a good thing. Losing money can be a bad thing.

Elevating the idea of profit as a good thing unto itself devoid of any other considerations is a problem. You have all heard of Pottersville?

This whole story reeks of greed from the sale onward with money as the primary driving force. It is no wonder that there is little sympathy for any of the parties involved.

[Paul]

As an East Coast person, I'm happy that Heronswood moved out this way. It's allowed for me to go to the East Coast opens now. The last one was very good. Nice article here talks about the last one. Picked up some nice hellebores.

http://www.mcall.com/features/custom/hg/garden/nurseries/all-gardenstopshops0427.5817119apr27,0,2361228.story

Future Opens
http://www.heronswood.com/openevents.asp

[Andrew]

The above comment by user 'Paul' was mass-spammed to dozens of gardening-related blogs by a Burpee employee with the IP 69.248.162.148 in Pennsylvania. It is a rather shoddy example of astroturfing in an attempt to simulate support for Burpee's actions. You can verify this with the following google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22I%27m+happy+that+Heronswood+moved+out+this+way%22&filter=0

Thanks for your opinion, 'Paul'.