‘He can’t sit and do nothing’

by Susan Gibbs Record Reporter
Published: May 15, 2008

He’s such a part of Greene that folks call him “Mr. Fred” rather than Mr. Benzinger.
Benzinger and his wife of nearly 60 years, Kathryn, have lived in Greene County since 1951, when they bought 16 acres back of the Corner Store in Ruckersville and started a nursery. They were in business there until 2006, when sold it to make way for the coming Ben Leake Plaza.
But, “He can’t sit and do nothing,” says Kathryn of her 85-year-old husband.
So he’s teaching horticulture to his new neighbors at K. Hovnanian’s Four Seasons active adult community.
“I asked Sandra (Berry, activities director at Four Seasons) if she wanted me to teach,” explains Benzinger. 
“I was thrilled,” says Berry.  “It was an easy lecture to fill, and people continue to ask for the next one.”
Now, Benzinger says, “There are 20-25 people in the class and we meet about once a month.”
Benzinger has a wealth of experience to offer.
He started growing vegetables when he was 13, at his home in Baltimore City.
“My mother had a big garden back when World War II was about to start. Her two gardeners quit to work in a copper mill so I had to work the garden,” says Benzinger. Though he might not have been exactly happy with the chore, he won top awards for his produce.
“I won the (Baltimore) Evening Sun’s gardening contest three years in a row and the Kiwanis Club of North Baltimore’s contest two years in a row. The third year, no one would compete with me.”
When he was 15, Benzinger started working in perennial gardens. He would hone his skills at the University of Maryland. It was in a horticulture class there in 1949 that he met his bride. “I proposed on our second date,” Benzinger smiles.
Two years later he was working for a nursery in Waynesboro when:  “I told Kathryn to get in the car, go between Charlottesville and Ruckersville and find a piece of land with a spring.”
In those days U.S. Route 29 was a two-lane road and Ruckersville was country. “There was no telephone service out there,” Kathryn explains.
She found the 16 acres behind the Corner Store.
“It was nothing but hills and brown sedge,” Kathryn says.
But even so, the bank turned them down for a loan.
“They wouldn’t even speak to me,” Benzinger says. “We had no money; a car, a washing machine, a stove, refrigerator, one child and another on the way.”
Benzinger took a loan out on his life insurance policy. A lumber company in Charlottesville granted him credit and he set about building a house himself.
He moved his family in about a month later.
“It wasn’t finished. There were no walls. You could stick your hands between frames,” says Kathryn. “Fred carried water to the house from the spring.”
Benzinger had purchased stock for the business, but when a drought wiped it out that first year, he built a greenhouse.
He put it together while Kathryn was in the hospital, having given birth to their second child.
The Benzingers persevered, and if luck had anything to do with it, it was luck as defined by his mother:  “Being prepared for opportunity when it knocks.”
Benzinger also has a history of going with the flow.
He started out breeding chrysanthemums, but found that people were more interested in daylilies.  In 1958, daylilies became his specialty. In the next decade, he won several blue ribbons for his hybrids; once walking away with 12 in the same competition.
In the 1970’s he had a catalogue printed, but he says the day it landed in households, nobody read it.
“It was the day Nixon resigned,” Benzinger explains. “My customers were my advertising.”
Benzinger would grow millions of daylilies - one year putting in 10,000—and ship all over the world, until 2006.

“We decided years ago we wanted to stay in Greene County,” Benzinger says. “When we heard Four Seasons was going to be built, we went up to Northern Virginia to see a model home. The dominoes fell into place.”
Kathryn Benzinger is thrilled: “Everybody’s happy and congenial. We’re like a bunch of kids. We have a Third Thirsty Thursday to greet new neighbors. We celebrate birthdays. We have had a pizza party and a soup contest. We just have a good time,” she says.
And Benzinger?
He gets to do all that with his wife, and “I share the vegetables I grow with our neighbors,” he says.