Bill and Catherine Winkler have turned the family business into a sprawling playground for their son, not quite 4-year-old Will, and his rambunctious young companions. And according to his mother, 6-month-old Fritz is already acquiring a certain predilection for the outdoor life, himself. “Whenever he starts crying, I just take him outside and he seems to settle right down,” she pointed out.
Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY:
Autumn Cooper, Catherine and Fritz Winkler, and Bill and Will Winkler run the show at Roots.
It’s surely just a matter of time before he’s joined Will in pushing toy tractors around in the potting soil. And they’ve created some corral areas, sandboxes, etc., for Will and friends. (Winkler gruffly suggested those areas were mostly secure, hinting at his ongoing efforts to keep the kids from tipping over the flowerpots.)
Winkler said he’d started the Roots Landscaping business (Route 113, just north of Selbyville) out of a desire to work for himself. Originally from Florida, he came to Delaware in time to catch a few years at Indian River High School and worked for one of the local landscaping outfits throughout that period.
And, he met his wife-to-be at Indian River. (Bill’s class of 1994, Catherine’s class of 1995.) They opened the landscaping business eight years ago.
Winkler doesn’t mow lawns, but anything else is pretty much open for negotiation (he does seed, fertilize, work on irrigation, etc.). In the main, Roots Landscaping focuses on design (not just for beds, but also for decks, driveways and ponds), flowers, trees and shrubs.
He said he had his own ideas about what looked best, but said he did his best to advise without pushing. “Ideally, what I’d want would be color, year-round,” he pointed out. “If I can talk people into it, that’s definitely what we’ll do.”
Yes, most color does fade by midwinter, Winkler admitted — but even then, he said, it is possible to give a home’s surrounds a little texture, with judicious plantings of decorative grass.
Winkler advised against reckless pruning at this time of year. “Depending on the plant, some blossom on this year’s growth, next year,” he pointed out — safest bet if you weren’t sure would be to wait until after it flowered.
He said it was a good time to plant trees and shrubs for next spring — “As long as the ground isn’t frozen you can still plant,” he added. They’ll be open until Christmas (and then again on March 1).
The Winklers took the plunge back in 2003 and expanded operations to include the new garden center on Route 133. Since then, they’ve turned it into a little natural wonderland with hardy perennials out in the yard, exotic tropicals in the greenhouse, with a barnful of gardening goodies in between.
And this year, they’ve arranged a full month of fun activities. On Oct. 8, family, friends and visitors gathered in the greenhouse, in defiance of the tropical rains, for some serious scarecrow stuffing. The Winklers and guests assembled frames, coordinated outfits, snipped twine and spray-painted some very crude facial features onto burlap noggins filled with straw — guaranteed to scare away even the roughest old bird.
Activities continue throughout the month (sort of an Octoberfest, without the beer), with reduced-price items every weekend and a Jack-O-Lantern Carving workshop (parental supervision required), “leave your mess with us,” on Saturday, Oct. 22, at 2 p.m.
For more information, call Roots Landscaping at 732-0866.