This Delaware Couple Has Developed The Garden Of A Lifetime

The courtship of Helen and Jerry Unruh was long-distance. “He had a florist deliver a rose to me every day,” Helen recalls. After two years, a bloom arrived with a card reading, “Will you marry me?” That was in 1975. Today, Jerry still indulges his wife’s love of flowers: They have 1,700 azalea bushes at their home in Odessa, Delaware—all squeezed onto their 1 1∕4-acre property. “They are such gorgeous things in the springtime,” says Helen. “It makes you happy you’re alive.”

Jerry, a World War II veteran, already had 85 bushes before they were married (he also built the house himself in the 1950s, with help from his brother). Helen recalls saying when she arrived, “Oh, I love them! Can we have more?” So he kept on planting.

But did they ever think they’d reach 1,700? “Not really,” admits Jerry with a laugh. Once they started, though, they couldn’t stop. They put them along the house’s foundation, around each of their trees (45 of them—maple, oak, beech, and pine—all planted by Jerry), up and down the hedgerow, and following the fence line.

At some point, there were just enough bushes to make the empty spots stand out. Jerry remembers thinking, “It’s kind of bare and scraggly looking, so we’d better add some more.”

The layout developed organically over the years as Jerry came across new bushes to acquire. He previously owned a well-drilling company in Middletown. The nature of the work was such that once the pumping process for a new well was underway, he had a little time to kill. If he had seen a nursery nearby, he’d pop over to investigate their stock. Often, he came home to Helen with azaleas in tow.

Sometimes, he’d even offer to buy plants out of the yards of his customers, who were usually happy to make a deal. “I bought