If there’s one thing Tony Price treasures more than his golf game or a well-manicured lawn, it’s his geraniums.
Price’s pink geraniums have a lineage dating back more than a century.
“From stock that was originally from Jersey, Ohio, in 1884, a wedding gift to Martha Brooks, who spent her entire life over in Alexandria on the Brooks farm. And she was the grandmother of the late Frederick Nichols,” said Price.
Nichols, a veterinarian for 50 years in Alexandria, Ohio, rescued the plants from a killer frost in 1953. Just a few years before his death in 2018 at age 97, he shared a cutting with Price, and Price documented the entire story.
Price, a golf course owner and greenskeeper for nearly 50 years, says he continues to keep the tradition going.
“I tell them the story and they want a cutting or they want a plant so I’ve probably done this now for 10 different people. I find at least one or two a year that would love to have one, so I keep giving them away,” says Price.
Price says he appreciates the passion others have for gardening.
Raising and maintaining his geraniums during his retirement years is a natural step.
“Our family started three golf courses here in Licking County, Willow Run up here, Raccoon down in Granville, and I designed and started Saint Albans in Alexandria,” says Price.
Price says if there’s any advice he can give its to not over water, transition the plant from inside to outside and don’t let them get direct frost in the fall.
However, Price says just like golf, the putting green in his backyard and raising geraniums, practice makes perfect.
