Walking onions from Pennsylvania farm country spread their footprints across Getty Villa herb garden
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What do the Getty Villa and a Mennonite farm in Pennsylvania have in common?
The robust patch of Egyptian onions in the Getty Villa’s herb garden started as a cluster of bulbs that grounds and gardens supervisor Michael DeHart plucked from his mother’s vegetable patch in Lancaster County, Pa. The plants, also known as walking onions, are unusual in that they hold several small bulblets at the tops of their stems; as those grow, the bulblets droop and eventually drop seeds, helping the plants to propagate with this ‘walking’ effect.
After toting the onions across the country in his luggage, DeHart covered the bulblets in pots with a half-inch of soil, nurtured them at his home, then transferred them last year to the villa garden.
‘From that one little clump of about 25 little bulbs, I got about 150 plants,’ DeHart said.
The walking onions are now thriving amid the villa’s papyrus stalks, caper plants and formal beds of Roman chamomile and costmary. It’s an unexpected touch in a place modeled on ancient Rome, but DeHart said he had no problem planting the onions here because they fall under the umbrella of Roman heritage.
‘They are a cross between onions from old Rome and Egypt that were hybridized centuries ago,’ he explained. ‘It was an easy fit, so I didn’t ask anybody. Now everyone is raving about them.’ No one more so than the gardener, whose mother passed away in 2005. ‘Every time I walk by the herb garden,’ he said, ‘I get a little ‘bing’ and think of her.’
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-- Laura Randall