DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997                 TAG: 9703080057

SECTION: HOME                    PAGE: G2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARCIA MANGUM, HOME & GARDEN EDITOR 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

DIGEST OWES BIG THANK-YOU TO BOB STIFFLER AND HELPERS

JUST AS SURE as daffodils bloom each spring, Robert Stiffler has doled out gardening advice in Weeder's Digest for the past 17 years.

Bob, who started writing his garden column for The Virginian-Pilot in 1974, told me last year he was cutting back on his work load. He'd still write his weekly Gardening Reminders and would continue answering reader questions, but he wouldn't write as many feature articles. And, alas, he wouldn't write Weeder's Digest.

That would've been worse than a spring without daffodils for me and other local gardeners. But, fortunately, gardening is too much in Bob's blood. So, we're once again blessed with another Weeder's Digest, filled with news and tips that Bob and others have gathered through the year.

Bob is a gardener by ``birth'' and training. He learned to garden in Iowa, following his grandmother down rows of tomatoes, potatoes, asparagus and rhubarb.

For more than 25 years, he worked in marketing and advertising with Smith-Douglass Fertilizer.

Along with the late Fred Heutte, Bob founded the Men's Garden Club of Tidewater and is a past president of the Norfolk Botanical Garden Society.

In 1995, he published a compilation of his gardening advice in the book ``Robert Stiffler's Gardening in Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina,'' which is now out of print.

This year, Bob turned over some responsibility for Weeder's Digest to staff writer Mary Reid Barrow.

Many readers know Mary Reid as author of Coastal Journal, a regular column in The Beacon, the community news section serving readers in Virginia Beach. She started writing for The Pilot in the mid-'70s.

Mary Reid, a lifelong gardener, says her gardening philosophy is one of ``benign neglect.''

She lives in Virginia Beach's North End and grows primarily herbs, vines and fruits. She also gardens to encourage butterflies and hummingbirds and says it's just as important to have a box turtle in her back yard as a tomato.

``I like gardening hand-in-hand with nature,'' she says.

Still, she says she isn't expert enough to draw on her own experience but loves to write about other gardeners and their gardens, as well as plants, trees, birds, butterflies and insects.

Also contributing this year are Laurie Smith, Virginia Tech weed scientist at the Hampton Roads Research Center, and Jeanne Hart Pettersen, member of the board of directors of the Herb Society of America and the Butterfly Society of Virginia and co-owner of Plants With a Purpose.

Thanks to all of our new contributors and especially to Bob Stiffler for another treasured edition of Weeder's Digest. KEYWORDS: WEEDER'S DIGEST

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu