They say Mozart composed his first symphony at age 8. Not bad, but ask him for the proper siting of Fritillaria meleagris and he was hopeless.
For information on Epimedium or Arisaema, you’ll have to ask another child prodigy, Sam Decker, who at age 10 became perhaps the world’s youngest garden lecturer when he addressed the Kingston Garden Club during their Sept.17 meeting.
Sam, a fifth-grader at Richard Gordon Elementary in Kingston, guided the club through a slideshow of native plants of Washington. Avoiding such mundane understory staples as salal and sword fern, Sam captured his audience’s attention with uncommon natives including the ghostly white, chlorophyll-free ghost plant (Monotropa uniflora) and rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera oblongifolia), which — as Sam made clear — does not treat snakebite, as the early settlers believed.
The Kingston Garden Club was pleased to host the youthful speaker, who runs through botanical nomenclature as easily as most people order pizza. His talk was delivered a day prior to the club’s Blanche Gray Garden Show at Gordon Elementary. The club hosted a second garden show Sept. 25 Wolfle Elementary. Sam is a regular participant in the Gordon show, as well as a regular in the school garden.
Sam, it seems, was born to grow. At 6 years old, he was given a field guide to native plants by his parents, Dan and Sarah Decker of Kingston. Sam began to carry the book along on the family’s frequent wilderness hikes and was soon pointing out saxifrages and smilacina. Four years later, Sam has his own home garden and rubs shoulders with the likes of horticulture master Dan Hinkley, whom Sam often works alongside as a volunteer at Heronswood Garden in Kingston.
“The community has really embraced Sam,” his father said. “Heidi at Dragonfly Nursery and Dave at Foxglove have encouraged him, and his teacher, Mr. (Mel) Gallup worked with Sam on his presentation in class.”
Sam’s field guide was the first of an ever-growing stack of garden books by Sam’s bed. While admiring her son’s single-minded pursuit of all things that bloom and grow, Sam’s mother has had to set limits.
“I have to check on him to be sure he’s not under the covers in his bunk bed, reading about gardening when he’s supposed to be asleep,” she said.
Whether Mozart or Sam Decker, even prodigies have bedtimes.
