Constant Gardener

As The Times And Terrain Change, The Meyer Seed Company Remains Rooted In Baltimore.

- Lydia Woolever

IT ALL STARTED WITH LIGHTRAINS, WHICH ARRIVED IN THE AFTERNOON, A DOSE OFWEATHER USUALLY WELCOME AT THE END OF SUMMER, THOUGH NOT ONCE THE STORMPICKED UP, AND THAT NIGHT, THE CITY STREETS BEGAN TO FLOOD. UNDER THE COVER OF DARKNESS, WATER ROSE ABOVE THE HARBOR’S SEA-WALL, SUBMERGING PARK BENCHES AND PARKED CARS, WHILE BEATING WINDSTOPPLED TREES AND LEFT A MILLION PEOPLE WITHOUT POWER. THE HIGH TIDE FILLEDBASEMENTS AND LIVINGROOMS AND BUSINESSES, WITH HURRICANE ISABEL EVENTUALLY SEEPING UNDER THE OLD STEEL DOORS OF THE MEYERSEED COMPANY.

In the morning, owner Harry Hurst surveyed the damage done to his family business in Fells Point. Inside, where the storm surge had reached upward of four feet, his warehouse, still under water, had turned to goulash, much of the fall inventory wet and ruined, including thousands and thousands of seeds. Giant pallets of topsoil had been lifted like feathers and floated around the sprawling storeroom, and heaps of cardboard boxes had not just started to disintegrate, but ferment.

“It was hell,” says Hurst, 16 years later. “You just don’t realize how much damage water can do.”

“We got destroyed, lost a lot of stuff,” says Butch Dingle, a longtime warehouse employee. “We thought Meyer Seed was through.”

Luckily, the company’s customers and vendors came to their rescue, replacing unsalvageable goods, deferring payments, even rolling up their own sleeves to help clean up after the water finally went back out to sea. It was a testament to the goodwill of this century-old seed business that has weathered much. Not just natural disasters, but also, over its nearly 110 years, times that have radically changed.