NEW YORK (AP) — Ralph Snodsmith, a specialist in gardening who tilled the mediums of radio, television and publishing to help homeowners in New York and across the country to care for their plants and to help them to thrive, died Saturday in Fredericksburg, Va. He was 70.
He died from complications of a broken hip, said Mary Snodsmith, his wife of 47 years. “He was just a gentle man. He cared about people. And he liked people,” she said.
Joe Bartlett, the news director of WOR-AM where her husband was host of “Garden Hotline,” called Ralph Snodsmith “the foremost authority on gardening.”
“He’s helped millions of people with their gardening questions, whether it’s their indoor plants, gardens or trees,” he said.
Snodsmith for eight years served as a gardening expert on “Good Morning America,” wrote several popular books on gardening, including “The Tri-State Gardener’s Guide” and “Fundamentals of Gardening,” and lectured at the New York Botanical Garden.
With degrees in floriculture and ornamental horticulture, he approached his subject with a scientist’s tenor and a gardener’s love for the earthiness of the art.
“Planting the right plant in the right environment means more than just knowing the amount of sun or shade it will receive,” he writes in “New York Gardener’s Guide.” ”Consider exposure to cold and wind.”
Snodsmith was born Nov. 21, 1939, in Mount Vernon, Ill. He began his career as an agricultural extension agent in Rockland County, N.Y., before becoming executive director of the Queens Botanical Garden in New York City.
For more than 35 years, he served as host of “Garden Hotline” and was a distinguished lecturer.
In December 2008, after living for nearly 40 years in Suffern, N.Y., about 40 miles northwest of New York City, the couple moved to Stafford, Va., where they lived with their daughter, his wife said.
Mary Snodsmith said they were already planning what to plant in their garden this spring when he broke his hip.
“We hadn’t gotten squared away,” she said. “We were going to have someone come and till up a spot for us and put in some flowers and vegetables. We did bring some rhododendrons from New York and they’re blooming profusely here now.”
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.