Saratoga News Helping to Scatter the Seeds We first heard about Tony Tomeo from one of his neighbors. It seems he celebrated his 31st birthday by planting 31 redwood trees in a park near his home in Los Gatos. A nurseryman at the time, Tomeo also donated 200 rhododendrons to the town of Los Gatos. The plants, no longer in perfect condition, were on their way to becoming mulch; he thought it made more sense to give them a second chance. Some 120 of them ended up in the Pageant Grounds behind the Los Gatos Civic Center; another 80 now grow in the town's Oak Meadow Park. It was Tomeo's uncle who first explained the mystery of seeds to him, and, says the boy who grew up to be a horticulturist, it was the greatest thing he ever heard. "I kept planting, and my father thought it was weeds. He kept pulling them out, and I kept planting." Tomeo, who earned his degree in horticulture from Cal Poly in 1990, fills his back yard with containers of plants, and his neighbors are often the happy recipients. Sometimes he helps them with their gardens. They think of him as the neighborhood Johnny Appleseed. We figured there's more than one way to scatter seeds, so we asked him if he'd like to share his enthusiasm and knowledge of horticulture with our readers. His answer was a column we'll run on alternate weeks beginning today. Readers are welcome to contact him with questions. Some answers may very well find their way into his column. --Dale Bryant, Editor [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, October 21, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.