Evening star. [volume], September 21, 1947, Page 23, Image 130

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
Fruit Tree With 21 Varieties
By WALLACE E. CLAYTON
HAVE YOU EVER seen a
tree that bears 18 varie
ties of apples and three types
of pears?
Winn T. Simmons, 518 As
pen street N.ff, has had one
flourishing in his garden for
years.
Mr. Simmons started graft
ing different varieties of ap
ples on his tree in 1928, when
he found that more fruit
ripened at one time than he
could use.
After his tree was bearing
flve different types of apples
he grafted on a sprig from a
sickle pear tree.
“Toe experts told me it
couldn’t be done,” he said.
“But like the bee that didn't
know it was too heavy to fly
I guess the tree didn’t know
it couldn’t produce pears, be
cause some fine big ones ap
peared a couple of years
later.”
After his success in making
one tree do the work of an
orchard, he kept adding more
grafts each year until the
tree now starts producing an
early apple in June and keeps
bearing fruit until late in
October.
“By putting tne winter ap
ples in my cold storage room
my family eats fruit from that
tree all year around,” he said.
But Mr. Simmons, who re
tired in 1943 after 42 years
as a claims examiner with the
Veterans’ Administration and
the Government Pension
Agency which preceded it,
doesn’t confine his garden
ing activities to teaching old
apple trees new tricks.
He has four new varieties of
iris registered with the Amer
t
Winn T, Simmons and his "pear-apple" tree.
ican Iris Society and the Royal
Iris Society of England. In
stead of developing new col
ors in his iris he has concen
trated on creating flowers
which are stronger and bigger
than existing types. Before
retiring from competition he
won six prizes in the annual
American Iris 8oclety shows
between 1933 and 1939.
Mr. Simmons became in
terested in developing new
horticultural varieties as a
boy on his father’s fruit farm
in Ohio. He moved to the
Washington area in 1913. He
started his first garden here
on land so poor, he said, that
“some of the neighbors came
over and told me to stop
wasting my time.”
But the first prizes he won
in Washington were for flow
ers and vegetables grown in
that garden.
For 10 years Mr. Simmons
has been experimenting with
tomato plants, and now h*
has a strain which grows from
10 to 12 feet tall and bears
tomatoes which often average
a pound or a pound and a half
each. Several years ago a
song sparrow built a nest in
one of his plants, and Mr.
Simmons still treasures a pic
ture of that sparrow sitting
on top of its nest, nearly
dwarfed by the huge tomato
beside it.
Mr. Simmons is aided in his
gardening by his grand
daughters, Marjorie, 0, and
Roberta, 4. They have been
living with him since the
death of their father, the Rev.
Robert Simmons, who was
pastor of Northminster Pres
byterian Church, Rhode Is
land avenue and Eleventh
street N.W., before it burned
in 1933.
Both Roberta and Marjorie
have their own little garden
plots, and although Roberta
is still “mainly interested in
digging up what she just
planted,” Marjorie shows every
sign of becoming as earnest
a gardener as her grand
father.
Roberta Simmons helps her grandfather harvest the
fruit. Star Staff Photos.
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