Garden offers quiet spot to unwind
By Ben Mook
The Daily Record of Baltimore
REISTERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — When he’s not up to his ears in work as the managing partner of Kramer & Connolly, you can often find Irwin R. Kramer out back, up to his ears in peppers, tomatoes, squash and herbs behind the four-lawyer firm’s historic Main Street office in Reisterstown.
A first-time gardener, Kramer is bolstered enough by the bounty to claim some heavy bragging rights for himself and his colleagues.
“I’ve been told it’s the largest law firm garden in the U.S.,” he said, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “I can’t prove that, of course, but I can’t disprove it either, so I’m going to stick with it.”
Kramer & Connolly moved in late 2010 to its new office. The building sits close to the road, leaving the rest of the lot as a wooded grassland.
“We were blessed enough to have a law firm with an acre of land behind it, so, I thought, ‘Let’s use it and have a garden,’” Kramer said.
They started planting in April, and the garden is now hitting its stride with tomatoes, green peppers and yellow squash aplenty. The successful debut comes as a surprise to Kramer, who expected a lot more trial and error the first time.
While the peppers and tomatoes battle it out in one corner of the garden for space, one vegetable so far has outstripped the others in terms of size and production.
“The most prolific grower so far has been the zucchini — I have zucchini coming out of my eyeballs,” Kramer said.
Kramer said having a garden in the backyard has meant more than just a steady source of fresh produce for the firm. He said it’s a great place to go to unwind or just get away if things get too hectic.
“It’s great to be literally paces from an office where there’s a lot of pressure and be able to change the scenery just like that,” Kramer said. “Just to be able to come out and pick a tomato or walk around, it’s a nice way to decompress.”
