"A Man and His Garden" final essay

Shannon Krenik

Professor Maltman

ENG 1101-03

February 13^th, 2017

A Man and His Garden

            Turning your passion into a reality is challenging but not impossible. That was my goal for this profile essay, I went out on a quest to find someone that did not think that their job could make it in this world but succeeded with his passion in hand.

            The man with a garden, has combed back white side hair, is about half bald on the top of his head and wears bland colored clothing. I noticed his nose is thinner from the inner ends of his eyes and extends down into an arrow shape. He also has dark blue eyes like the bottom of the sea. This man is Steven Ruse. He grew up in Deephaven, MN, graduated with a BA Degree from St. Olaf College and studied for a Masters Degree in Horticulture. When he was a young boy growing up in the suburbs of Minnesota, he had a passion for the outdoors. At just eleven years, he had his first job delivering newspapers. A couple years later, he started mowing lawns for profit. By the time he was fourteen, he had his own lawn mowing service, most of his customers were friends of his parents. Right then and there, Steve knew he had started something that he loved. When college rolled around, he got a job around some of the estates in Minnetonka, MN, and while working for them, he saw for the first time, the art of gardens. Later in college, he met people through the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum where he did his research and after talking with them, he came to the realization this was something he wanted to do and was passionate for.

            Any job you dream of having does not always come true to your liking. You may get close but not the way you hoped or you just give up all together and become stuck in a rut of disappointment in yourself and the job you found. Steve Ruse got the dream job he always wanted because he never gave up hope. People told him it would not  work and he even thought to himself it wouldn’t work out but he put those thoughts aside and made it a reality.  “I think the feathers in my hat, I gotten through the years the satisfaction of making a garden, being outside, doing what I really like to do and making a living at it, that’s a luxury, you just feel not only a luxury but a situation where you’re lucky to be in that. You can be in a job you like and be around people you like, just make a go for it.” His dream job was to be able to design gardens, so with his love for the outdoors and a little creativity, he made it possible and made the life he wanted come true.

            “I think a lot of people have the idea and over the last couple of decades that they don’t have a connection to the environment and they spend a lot of their time going to their jobs, back to their houses, looking at electronics, you know, they have no connection to their mediate surroundings and to have something of beauty where you can create to make an issue or reason for them to come out, open the door, step outside and just wonder at what is right there.” Steve Ruse explained this in a way that opened my eyes, that there is more to life than the normal setting. I agree with these words of wisdom because this is what our world has come too nowadays. Everyone gets up, goes to a job that pays the bills and comes back home to the electronics. Not many people have a connection with the outside world and what it is like to see something grow into such a beauty; we just let it slip through our fingers as days go by.

I had to ask him one last question. His response surprised me as he told the history and the meaning of the word. “I named my company after a plant that’s called Heliotrope and the reason being is that it’s a plant that doesn’t survive our winters so it needs protection which any business does and it’s very fragrant, I liked fragrant plants ones that have a sweet aroma. Heliotrope has a sweet vanilla like a cherry pie aroma you might say, but it’s also from a stand point of what the word means. It has a Greek root, goes back to two words that are Greek. One is Helios which is the Greek word for sun and the other one is trope. It’s a scientific botanical term and it’s a stimulus that, for example, why do roots grow into the ground rather than go up in the sky. So it’s a stimulus of something towards a plant that makes it survive. A heliotrope is a stimulus toward the sun and that is what gardeners are, they go out, work when the sun comes up, follow the sun and work till the sun goes down. That is the meaning of heliotrope.” Before I asked him, I did not know a thing about this type of plant. Now I crave to plant it or even just smell the sweet aroma of vanilla and cherry pie that he described. I want to be able to sense it for myself because I can only imagine that sweet fragrance.

            Steve Ruse has taught me many things. One valuable thing I learned was to never give up on the dream you wish to have. Instead of thinking about it and longing for it to come true, go out and experience that dream and tell yourself “I don’t want to be stuck doing the same old thing every day, I want to go out and be free!”, and do not listen to the people that think it will not work or your making a mistake, otherwise you will doubt yourself and it will never come true. Another thing I learned was the meaning of the word heliotrope, it fascinates me how that came about and the sweet aroma it gives. Though Steve Ruse is an outgoing, comical man, he is very professional when it comes to his work. He is very passionate in what he does and make’s sure everything is perfect in his art of the garden world.