last word
AT 85,
Stephanie Cohen
I Jarrad Saffren | Staff Writer
n the early 1940s, Stephanie Cohen
moved with her parents to Camden,
New Jersey, so her father could take
a job.

People in the city were planting
“victory gardens,” as instructed by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who
encouraged Americans to try to feed
themselves and their neighbors as
much as possible. This would help
a government trying to take care of
its military overseas that was fighting
World War II as well as a population at
home. Cohen’s parents participated like
the good Americans they were, but
about two years in, their daughter had
a question.

“Why aren’t we growing flowers?” she
asked. Her folks bought her a petunia, a
geranium and a marigold. She took care
of all three.

“And I liked it,” Cohen added.

And she still does.

The 85-year-old Collegeville resident
and Tiferet Bet Israel member in Blue
Bell is known in horticultural circles as
“the perennial diva.” She not only builds
gardens but talks about how to build
them, too.

Cohen spent more than two decades
as a horticulture professor at Temple
University, according to a 2018 Nursery
Management profile; she designed
a four-year program in the practice
at Temple Ambler; and she held jobs
“hybridizing orchids for John DuPont”
(yes, that John DuPont) and working in
management at Waterloo Gardens on
the Main Line.

Cohen also appeared on PBS and
QVC as the “perennial diva” and
became a best-selling author with titles
like “The Perennial Garden’s Design
Primer” and “The Nonstop Garden.”
28 JANUARY 5, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
She remains an editor emeritus at Fine
Gardening, a lifestyle magazine that
she contributed to for three decades.

“From a very early age, I liked to take
care of things. Maybe they were color-
ful. Or maybe it was because the bees
and the butterflies were attracted to
them. Who knows?” Cohen said. “But
there was something about them.”
Cohen discovered her passion at a
young age. But she did not pursue it until
much later. Before she went to college,
her mother asked her, “Do you want to
be a nurse, a secretary or a teacher?”
which were three common options for
women at the time. Cohen did not have
an answer, but she ultimately chose
teaching. She thought she would like it
more than the other two.

By the late ‘60s, she was a high
school English teacher with a husband,
Dr. Richard Cohen, and three young
kids, Abby, Douglas and Rachel. As a
mother, Cohen had little time to cultivate
a garden outside her home. But she
did get “caught up in the 1960s house
plants craze,” as that 2018 Nursery
Management article explained it.

The plant enthusiast put hundreds of
them around her house. It was not a big
house, either. Cohen had to put a few
plants on top of a television and, on two
separate occasions, she burned out the
TV while watering them. Dr. Cohen told
her that maybe she should take her
hobby outside.

So, Cohen went back to school to
study horticulture, earning a degree
from Temple Ambler and a master’s
from Arcadia University in Glenside.

She also helped out at the Temple
greenhouse. After graduating, she
landed her teaching job at Temple and
went on to mentor hundreds of “public
garden directors, garden center owners
and heads of arboretums,” according to
the Nursery Management article.

“As Jews, we were told that we were
the caretakers. That we’re supposed to
be taking care of our communities and
the soil and everything else,” Cohen
said. “It fits together with what you learn
as a good Jewish person.”
Later in life, when their kids were
older, the Cohens moved to a
Collegeville property that “did not have
one plant,” Richard Cohen said. Now it
has a garden featured in magazines and
50-80 house plants inside.

“She just loves plants and growing
things,” Dr. Cohen said.

Today, Cohen describes herself as
semi-retired. But you never really retire
from a passion, so she’s still taking
calls from friends and family members
about how to grow gardens and care
for specific plants. She gives her advice
free of charge.

And at a moment when there’s a
general, digital-age desire to reconnect
with the natural world, she’s giving it
to Jewish Exponent readers, too. First,
according to Cohen, you must buy a
gardening book and read it, too. Then
go to a gardening center and buy a
beginner plant, like a succulent, which
you only need to water once or twice
a week. The sunlight will take it from
there. “And then you just keep going,”
Cohen said. “You buy yourself another
book.” ■
Courtesy of Stephanie Cohen
CONTINUES TO TEND TO HER GARDEN