Warminster, PA

Keeping America Blooming: For 125 years, Bucks County has been home to Burpee Seed

The glossy garden catalog arrives in the homes of American gardeners each new year, its bright pages a preview of colors to come once spring reawakens our gardens. Tomatoes of deepest red, rose-pink peonies, and plump, juicy blueberries and raspberries fairly leap off the pages. Flip to the back, and the address reads Warminster, Pa.—W. Atlee Burpee & Co.’s home in Bucks County—long the holder of the company’s heart.

W. Atlee Burpee—who began selling seeds in 1876, armed with $1,000 and an 18-year-old’s enthusiasm—called Bucks County home. It’s here, near Doylestown (pop. 8,575) that he bought a pre-Revolutionary War farm, named it Fordhook, and created one of the country’s first and largest trial grounds for seed-testing. From iceberg lettuce to Big Boy tomatoes and First Lady marigolds, W. Atlee, son David, and their experts developed and tested here many of Burpee’s greatest innovations before introducing them to the public.

Burpee’s headquarters moved to Warminster (pop. 32,830) in 1973, says CEO George Ball Jr., who purchased Burpee in 1991.

“General Foods (the previous owner) understood that this was a family company, so they selected a large, pleasant industrial park area, with proximity to a softball field so the employees could feel a sense of community.” Open space and great railroad connections for commuting to work made Warminster an ideal location, but given the company’s long association with Bucks County, the move seems more like a homecoming.

Today—in its 125th year—Burpee bases its catalog, retail, and Internet operations there. “Burpee Seed is known all over the world,” says Beverly Miller, vice president of the chambers of commerce that serve Bucks County and greater Warminster. “People always have heard of Warminster—because of Burpee Seed.”

Once primarily agricultural, Warminster and Bucks County today reflect a merging of residential development and green space. People move here, Miller says, because they’re looking for land to call their own. “People here love their gardens,” she adds. “It’s a well-rounded community, but still countryish.”

The area is also steeped in history—the home of writer Pearl S. Buck and the site where Washington crossed the Delaware in 1776. Burpee’s own history stands at Fordhook Farm. Ball purchased the land from the Burpee family in 1999, including the historic Manor and Carriage houses (a country inn), and the old trial gardens, which he restored.

“There was a lot of underbrush that we had to cut out and a lot of placement and reworking where the gardens were,” says Sharon Kaszan, Burpee’s product development horticulturalist. The gardens now cover about 20 acres, with another 40 acres of rambling meadow and ravine, home to herons, deer, wild turkeys, foxes, and other wildlife.

“Fordhook Farm is where we conduct about half of our product development and research,” Ball says. “We really go from A to Z here in Bucks County, from creating new varieties to selecting cultivars from all over the world and testing them.”

The key is developing seeds and plants that will grow and bloom consistently, building trust and reliability, says Kaszan. This summer, the gardens will feature up to 1,000 different varieties: tomatoes, marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers and peppers, in kitchen gardens focused on culinary plants and in decorative gardens.

In 1996, Burpee received CARE’s Institutional International Humanitarian Award for its seed drops in troubled countries such as Rwanda, Somalia, and Haiti, an offshoot of their seed development process. “The one in Rwanda was the largest vegetable seed relief shipment ever conducted,” notes Ball. “It impacted 1.7 million people, a startling figure.”

Burpee also works close to home, making community gardens available at Fordhook Farm and sponsoring the annual Burpee Hero Awards, recognizing heroic acts by volunteers such as fire and ambulance crews.

“I see promise when I look at a seed,” Sharon Kaszan says.

It’s an apt metaphor, not just for Burpee’s future, but for gardens across Warminster, Bucks County, and, indeed, the world.

Ottawa writer Yvonne Jeffery Hope looks forward each year to the promise of a new growing season.

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