Community Corner
Haddonfield's Garden of Eden on Display
Robert Grossman's Woodland Avenue home is the garden stop on Haddon Fortnightly's upcoming Home and Garden Tour.
Robert Grossman’s Haddonfield gardens provide a showcase of sights, sounds and smells–brilliant flowers, chirpy birds, aromatic herbs and more.
His Woodland Avenue home is one of the stops on the May 6 Home and Garden Tour. Sponsored by the Haddon Fortnightly, the tour features four homes and one garden—the Grossman property.
Grossman said the work an extensive garden requires is well worth it.
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“It’s a labor of love for me,” he said. “Being in touch with the land, to me, it’s rejuvenating. And I think it’s important for people to be in touch with nature and their surroundings and share that.”
On May 6, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Grossman will share his passion for the great outdoors in a suburban setting, some of it tended, some not.
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Grossman, a librarian with the Philadelphia Orchestra, enjoys growing vegetables and flowers, as well as allowing Mother Nature to work her magic with less intervention in his rear yard where Newton Creek flows through the property.
“My garden is certified as a nature habitat by the National Wildlife Federation,” he said.
The backyard shows old-growth ash trees, pines, Japanese maples and dwarf bamboo. The front yard features numerous herbs, including five kinds of basil, as well as fig trees, a strawberry patch, a tidy, fenced vegetable garden, sedum and countless lilies, which Grossman adores.
“I love their texture, I love their color, I love their scent—especially their scent,” he said.
The tickets for the home and garden tour are $15 in advance and $20 on the day of the tour. They can be purchased at a number of places in the borough, including the Visitors’ Center, Happy Hippo and the library.
The tour benefits preservation of the historic Fortnightly building, as well as the organization’s charities and scholarship programs, said Joan Fox, event chairman.
“Every house is different,” said Fox. “They’re very unique and lovely.”
There is also a luncheon served at the Fortnightly building from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tickets are $12.
The tour is a project of the various sections of the Fortnightly, a club whose first president served more than a century ago–the Juniors, the Evening Membership Department and the General Club.
