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Dee Howell, senior superintendent of horticulture, surveys an overgrown flower bed at Godwin Park community center. Howell likes to inspect projects before deciding what plants would work best in an area. Photo by Dave Schafer

By Dave Schafer

The city’s two greenhouses are empty. Eleven months of the year, they’re home to pansies, violets, zinnias and a rainbow of other seasonal colors.

But this week is a rarity. Plants rest in the path beside the greenhouses, neatly labeled leftovers from the summer planting that mostly ended before the stifling June days began.

That doesn’t mean Dee Howell, Parks & Recreation senior superintendent of horticulture, doesn’t have things to do. Horticulture is all about thinking ahead, she says.

Pots need to be filled in anticipation of the fall transitional planting, which takes place in July. Of the 20 employees who work in horticulture, four answer to Howell, who also oversees landscaping at the Memorial golf course, City Hall, and 10 libraries.

“We provide the icing on the cake,” says Howell, whose flower-print shirt of soft reds, blues, purples, oranges and greens blends into her surroundings and her profession. “This administration is concerned with how things look. There’s a higher standard.”

The plants
The 100-feet-by-150-feet greenhouse and the 30-feet-by-100-feet greenhouse stand side by side in a clearing across the street from Memorial Park.

Twice a year, Howell and her staff organically grow two massive crops of about 75,000 plants. One crop is grown in spring for summer planting and one in fall for winter planting.

In summer and winter, smaller amounts are grown to fill in bare areas in the fall and spring.

“There’s nothing more exciting then starting with a seed, nourishing it with life, and the next week it’s growing,” says Howell, who got her experience in horticulture while working at Busch Gardens in the mid-’70s and as assistant parks manager for Harris County Precinct 1 before joining Parks 22 years ago.

The landscapes
At the Houston Garden Center, Howell delivers two pallets of torenias and checks the flowers on the opposite side of the front parking lot. Most of the plants still look good, but a few are dying. The summer tropical varieties haven’t been installed yet.

“Deciding what to plant next?” asks a middle-aged woman in sweat pants and a T-shirt.

“Yeah,” Howell says.

“I loved your tropicana and black-eyed Susans last year,” the woman says. “We need butterfly plants. Milkweed.”

“Yeah,” Howell says. Howell likes planting butterfly plants because they create a habitat.

“The public is always the customer,” Howell says after the woman leaves. She tries to make city landscapes examples of what residents can grow in Houston.

“We have people who base their landscape on what we do here,” she says.

In the truck, Howell makes a note to drop off some hot pepper spray to discourage the rabbits or rats that are eating some plants in back of the center.

The other stuff
Hugo Garcia, recreation specialist, wants Howell’s input on plants to install in the bed that runs along one side and the back of the Godwin Park community center.

Howell walks around the center with Garcia, talking notes. She estimates it will take 30 to 40 plants to fill the run.

This will be his project, but she’s happy to offer help.

“We’ll make it happen, as long as you can maintain it,” she tells him. “It’s going to have to be watered every day.”

“I’ll get out the long hose,” Garcia replies. Howell is confident his garden will flourish because Garcia has already shown that he’ll make it a priority.

After a stop at Stella Link library to inspect the progress of the landscaping, Howell returns to the clearing where the greenhouses share space with park maintenance and the urban forester.

She goes to the forester’s office and tells him about the three palms, two river birches and Chinese pistach that should be removed from Memorial golf course’s Bush Grove because they aren’t native.
Howell has gotten her outdoor work done early.

That’s one of her strategies to beat the heat. Now she can spend the afternoon doing administrative work in the shade of the covered headhouse, the cement-and-metal structure that houses her office with its on-the-fritz air conditioner.

Administrative work isn’t as fun as watering or trimming the trees, but that’s the life of a manager, she says.

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