MEMBER PROFILE
BOB HILL
Allen Bush: From Seed Starter to Seed Searcher
© PHOTOS COURTESY JOHN NATION / JOHNNATIONPHOTOGRAPHY. COM
Somewhere in his early 20s, Allen Bush figured out that while a degree in sociology was fine and accounting was absolutely the wrong way to go, a guy just might make a happy living in horticulture— with a little bit of writing thrown in just to see where it could lead. Not exactly a road less traveled, but it did make all the difference.
Bush already was one of those kids who was planting bean seeds in milk containers in first grade. Even then he enjoyed the magic that came with it, that tiny little seed pushing up leaves, vines and flowers.
His early education was a mix of Louisville, Kentucky, public schools and the private Blue Ridge School in Saint George, Virginia, where a teacher told him,“ You know, you can write.”“ I can?” answered Bush, finding needed affirmation for a deep-seated talent that also required a little cultivation.
In 1969, he went on to the University of Kentucky because that’ s where his friends were going – and the alternative sounded a lot like Vietnam. The accounting major died a quick death:“ I realized, oh God, I’ ve got to do homework every night.”
INFLUENCE OF WRITERS, POETS Sociology agreed more with his soul. The University of Kentucky fostered a great writing atmosphere. Wendell Berry taught there; as did Guy Davenport— author, poet, artist and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner— and graduate student Richard Taylor, who would become a Poet Laureate of Kentucky.“ They had a big influence on me,” said Bush.
His strongest influence was a little more existential. While in college, he and three buddies moved to an old farmhouse in rural Jessamine County. The rent was exceedingly cheap, about $ 20 a month each. The house did have electricity, but was bereft of such niceties as running water and indoor plumbing.
“ And I thought to myself,” Bush said,“ My mother gardened, my sister gardened. I’ m out here in the country. I ought to have a garden.” Bush passed on that wish to farm owner Elzie Lowery. He then spent much of the winter reading organic magazines, such as Mother Earth News. That spring, Lowery called Bush to tell him his new garden had been plowed. It was at the far end of a tobacco patch; roughly 300 feet long and 3 feet wide.
“ And I thought,” said Bush,“ this is not exactly what I had in mind, but it is my first garden.” His joy in that also spread to the nearby fields and woods, where he could watch the buckeyes unfurl in the spring, and learn the names of the bursting clumps of wildflowers.
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