Garden chief girds for spring splendor

DURHAM -- Like the hearty yellow daffodils that push up from the cold ground early each spring, Harry Jenkins is a perennial.

The long-serving superintendent at Durham's Sarah P. Duke Gardens comes back year after year. He arrived in the summer of 1971 as a college intern. After graduating from N.C. State University the next year with a degree in floriculture, Jenkins went to work full time.

"I've seen a lot of changes in 35 years, but I still look forward to coming to work each day," said Jenkins, 56. "My love for this place has not diminished at all. You come to my house, you'll see a lot of pictures of the gardens on the walls."

March is a heady time at the gardens, nestled in a sprawling valley next to Duke University's gothic West Campus and Duke Hospital. Already the pear trees are wearing puffy sweaters of pink blooms.

It's time to set out the seedlings that have been carefully tended in the greenhouse all winter, pick up fallen sticks and scatter new mulch. In a few weeks, large crowds of visitors will flood the gardens to admire its sprawling acreage in full flower.

They'll walk past carefully designed beds that have benefited from Jenkins' green thumb or perhaps cross the sturdy wooden bridge his hands helped erect more than three decades ago. But ask Jenkins to show you something he has done and he'll rattle off the names of the others who contributed more than he did.

Jenkins isn't the top administrator at the gardens, though he has been there longer than anyone else. The 22 full-time employees are augmented by a brigade of about 300 volunteers.

He is one of five horticulturists on staff, and each has his own budget, but many decisions are made collaboratively. The orientation of each new path, bed or boulder is drawn out well in advance, the plans reviewed by a committee.

"The staff here is great to work with," he said. "We all tap into each other's strengths and learn from each other. We work together as a team."

In tranquil tones

Jenkins speaks in a soft voice moderated not to disturb the tranquility of this special place, even when no one else is around.

"I think his Eastern North Carolina roots have kept him humble," said Jeff Yohn, the director of development for the gardens. "Of course he delegates from time to time, but he does still get his hands dirty."

Jenkins grew up on a farm up in Northampton County, near the little village of Potecasi. As a boy, Jenkins was an active member of the local 4-H club.

"I've always loved working with plants," he recalls as he gives a visitor a morning tour in a golf cart. "From 10 or 11 years old, I've always known my life's work would be with plants. I love them all, except maybe bamboo."

He says this while driving past a large stand of towering green stalks in the asiatic arboretum, expounding on how he finds bamboo aesthetically pleasing but practically aggravating. Related more closely to grass than trees, bamboo spreads quickly and can be tougher to eradicate than kudzu.

Jenkins abruptly hits the brake, and the cart crunches to a halt on the gravel path.

"You see that blue heron down there?" he asks, pointing to a majestic, brightly colored bird standing proudly on top of a small pagoda. "You know they're very territorial. There's only one in the gardens, and he's it."

Responsibility for the garden's various sections is divided, and Jenkins focuses mostly on The Terraces, flower beds between low walls made of the signature Duke stone quarried near Hillsborough. Cut into the slope of a hill above a small pond, the terraces are one of the garden's oldest features, first laid out in the 1930s to resemble the lines on a globe if viewed from high above.