Mass. Horticultural stiffs college student
For three days, Jared Sell toiled in the soil.
In the end, tomatoes, sod grass, lettuce, and flowering plants dotted his 750 square feet of greenery inside the Bayside Expo Center in Boston in early March as part of the annual New England Spring Flower Show.
A model train snaked through the scene, while information panels correlated vegetables with alternative fuel sources.
The cost of such a patch? About $3,500.
Sell dipped into his college savings to front the money needed for the display with the understanding the show’s sponsor, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, would reimburse him.
“I was hoping to get it back for my first tuition payment,” said Sell, who will pursue a degree in landscape architecture at the University of Rhode Island in the fall.
Sell, 18, who won three awards for his project, has yet to see a check.
That is because the 179-year-old organization is foundering. The society is wrangling with a budget gap of at least $800,000. Two-thirds of its staff have been let go in the last two months.
The Wellesley Townsman reported last week the organization has nine paid positions, down from more than 30 in better times.
There has been talk of discontinuing the flower show a regional institution that draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, said society trustee Holly Perry.
First established in 1871, the show is the longest running of its kind in the United States and the third largest in the world, according to the society’s Web site.
The board of trustees has considered folding the organization, which is headquartered at Elm Bank, a 36-acre swath of land in Wellesley and Dover.
The society is funded through endowments, membership fees, grants and some government funding.
The group has launched a “Save Our Society” fundraising campaign, hoping to raise $800,000.
“We made the decision to at least have Custer’s Last Stand,” said Perry on Monday.
Perry said several factors, including rising utility costs, have contributed to the financial problems.
“The entire green industry is hurting,” she said. “To heat a greenhouse nowadays is exorbitant.”
Inaccurate estimates came in for the Gardens on the Greenway project in Boston — an extensive project in a string of parks and green space that runs along what was formerly the Central Artery.
“You name it and it went wrong,” said Perry.
By the end of July, Sell said he received a letter suggesting he could write off his expenditures as a donation to a nonprofit organization on his tax forms.
“I have not heard from them since that letter,” said Sell.
Sell said he was initially told by employees of the organization that only a small number of parties had not received reimbursement.
To which Perry said, “All creditors will be treated equally.”
Perry acknowledged that such a letter was more appropriate for some of the larger companies that put on displays at the show, not someone like Sell, who graduated from Framingham High School this past spring.
Perry said the board was hoping to come to a decision regarding potential payment plans by the end of September.
“We had to put a stop to the money that is going out,” said Perry.