"The only way to understand Mother Earth is to be a serious gardener,” says Dr. Bernard Huang. “Only then does one understand how amazingly complex and beautiful the planet is that we live on.”
The retired cardiothoracic surgeon talks from experience. His 7.5-acre estate in Lexington, Massachusetts, resembles an arboretum that features more than 150 plant species, a tranquil pond, and two beautiful homes—one for Dr. Huang and his wife, the other for his daughter, one of his two children.
Dr. Huang took up gardening several years before retiring from practice in 1997. “I used to see older doctors hanging around hospitals because they didn’t have any other interests in life,” he recalls. “I wanted a hobby, so I took up gardening, something that would keep me occupied in later years.”
Soon after retirement, gardening became more than a hobby for Dr. Huang. It became a passion. “This was a wetlands and my house was literally the first one in the area,” he says, pointing out details while maneuvering his utility vehicle over a bridge built with his own hands. “The rhododendrons are beautiful in the spring, and I’ve just planted nine weeping cherry trees. They will bloom in the spring, too, just like those in Washington, D.C.”
Transplanting plants in his greenhouse took the place of performing heart bypass surgeries while his garden helped absorb some of his abundant energy and enthusiasm for life. At the young age of 79, Dr. Huang still spends a full day nearly every day there, but he doesn’t maintain his property alone. No, he has help from his Walker Mowers, one of which resides at his summer home in New Hampshire, a Kubota tractor and loader, and a fourwheel-drive Kubota utility vehicle.
“I read about the Walker Mower in a magazine and thought it would be perfect for my property,” he relates. “So I purchased my first one in 1997, a 20-hp diesel.” With so much work to do on his land, Dr. Huang decided he needed a few more for his attachments: a snow blower and blade, a leaf blower and a dethatcher. Today, his lineup includes four Walker Mowers: three diesels and one gas-powered unit on his leaf blower.
“If General Motors made automobiles like Walker Manufacturing makes mowers, the company wouldn’t have needed a bailout,” says this user. “Yes, the mower is a bit expensive.” But using an American cliché, he notes, “You get what you pay for.”
“There’s not a better mower on the market,” he adds. “I know that. I’ve done my research and I’ve used the machine for nearly 15 years.”
Leading By Example
Born in Shanghai, Dr. Huang came to this country in 1953 when he was only 17 years old. He had $25 to his name, a Chinese-American dictionary under his arm, and a scholarship to Boston University. After spending seven years in school and finishing his residency, the young doctor established a private practice and proceeded over the next three decades to perform surgery in eight Boston area hospitals. His first return visit to his homeland wasn’t until 1973 when President Nixon opened the door to China. At the time, Dr. Huang became the first American-trained doctor to enter Shanghai. He has since been back to China 18 times, sharing his medical knowledge with Chinese students.
Still attached emotionally to China, Dr. Huang says there is no question where his loyalty lies, though. “I’m a U.S. citizen and an American,” he emphasizes. “This is where I was educated, made a living, and raised my family.”
In many ways, the garden represents the gardener’s view of life, not to mention life in America. Dr. Huang brims with pride as he talks about gradually transforming a virgin wetlands area into what he calls “an American chop suey garden” filled with a wide variety of indigenous plants. “There is no social welfare here,” he laughs. “I plant trees and flowers, and baby them for the first few months. Then, if they make it on their own, that’s great. If they don’t, they didn’t belong here in the first place.”
Later, while sifting through hundreds of digital images of his native homeland, before and after Nixon’s visit, he talks about his family escaping from the Japanese in 1945, hearing about President Roosevelt’s death while on a boat to Taiwan, and later coming to this country to study medicine. “You know, I wasn’t able to return to China until 1973,” he explains. “By then, my father had passed away, and my mother had been ill from having a stroke. So many things were on the verge of changing in China, too.”
Dr. Huang shows images of barren streets and broken-down train stations, all from his early visits. He then scrolls to present-day China where cities are alive with color, modern shopping malls, and futuristic-looking train stations. Still under communist rule and with more than 1.4 billion people, Dr. Huang admits that China has its issues, but he says the country and its economy are on the right path—and will one day challenge the western world for leadership.
“It’s not about domination anymore,” he emphasizes. “We are in a global economy and no one country will dominate like we did after World War II. But I believe the U.S. is in a great position to lead the world by example. This country is very privileged with its geography, resources, people and government. We have issues, too, but by resolving them we can help show the way for other countries.”
Dr. Huang is certainly leading by example. His students are practicing medicine in all corners of the world, and even his neighbors are learning that native landscapes don’t have to all look the same, or be maintained in the same way. “I think I may have been one of the first Walker Mower users in the area,” he remarks. “Then, I began to see more of them.”
No, this retired surgeon doesn’t take credit for introducing the mower to Lexington, but just possibly his example has made life easier for a few area property owners and local landscape contractors.
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