Published: February 01, 2008 10:22 pm         

Silent Seed: Port man opens shop

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — A visitor to The Silent Seed can open the door with a loud squeak and slam it behind them.

A few feet away, hunched over his indoor flower bed, owner Jude Platteborze will never look up.

A light tap on his back, however, stirs Platteborze, of Newburyport, into action. He straightens up with a wide smile and extends his hand, nodding, leading the visitor into the store. He makes them feel welcome without uttering one word. He has to.

Platteborze, 31, is deaf and rarely speaks. Stashed nearby, among the plants of the indoor botanical garden is a notebook that Platteborze uses to communicate with customers. He’s just as happy, though, if the customers prefer not to talk, choosing instead to relax inside his store and explore the plants he’s cultivated over years of self-taught botany.

Platteborze, who communicated through sign language with his mother interpreting in spoken English for this interview, said that he plans to put his customers at ease when they walk through the door, despite the fact he can’t speak with them conventionally. He has spent his life around hearing people and attended public school in Wayland.

When asked whether he’ll need assistance running the store so that he can communicate with his hearing clients, Platteborze’s response is telling: “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Platteborze searched as far as Nova Scotia for a place to bring his plants. A few months ago, he settled on a storefront on Lexington Avenue in Magnolia. The Silent Seed opened last Saturday.

Over the past two and a half months, Platteborze has set up shop, planting an indoor botanical garden, lining the shelves with potted plants and painting the walls a soft lilac. The store was named after a poem his mother, Newbury First Parish Minister Nancy Platteborze, wrote about him when he was a baby and she realized he was deaf.

“Now this is my baby,” Platteborze said of his store.

He nurtures almost all the plants from seedling to their adult stage, and a large part of his business is selling the seeds he cultivates. Platteborze has traveled across eastern North America collecting different plants and seeds. From those, he cultivates seeds for the next generation of plants.

To give customers an idea of what their seed purchase will look like, Platteborze built an oversized flower box that takes up a large chunk of the store. The variety of plants are there for visitors to examine and learn about, and to provide the kind of environment that will make people want to stay awhile.

“I want to offer a feeling of peace, and a place where they can just sit and be and think and share their passion for connecting to nature,” Platteborze said. “And they can take part of that with them to their house.”

Until now, Platteborze has sold his plants and seedlings almost exclusively online, taking the products he grew in his backyard and shipping them to customers. Several moves that have required him to uproot or restart his nursery have made him especially happy to find a place to call his own.

Platteborze jokes that he is at his store “22/7,” and driving the other two hours of the day. The shop is open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., or by appointment, but he often stays until 2 a.m. at the store and the nursery next door. It takes him eight hours to water all his plants. The rest of the time he spends making cuttings to cultivate new generations of plants, writing plant tags or working on the computer, making sales and networking.

Platteborze’s mother attributes his love of plants to his deafness. Deaf infants often have trouble with balance, and it took Platteborze three times the normal amount of time to learn to sit up or crawl. As a result, she said, he spent quite a long time belly-side down in the grass, nose-to-nose with plants and bugs.

All Platteborze’s knowledge is self-taught, gleaned from books he’s read and the hands-on experience of cultivating his own nursery, and as a result, he loves to teach others. He was the first deaf child to attend the Children’s School of Science, a summer school in Wood’s Hole, and he subsequently became an assistant teacher there.

He plans to open a kids corner, where children can plant seeds and watch them grow — one of his favorite parts of botany.

“I love how they are each unique and how they’ve evolved in so many different ways that are fascinating,” said Platteborze after showing a visitor a plant that snaps its leaves shut when touched to ward off insects. “I love watching things grow and nurturing them.”



Kristen Grieco writes for Gloucester (Mass.) Daily Times.



About the Store

Owner: Jude Platteborze of Newburyport

Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or by appointment (e-mail santoury@aol.com)

Address: 15 Lexington Ave., Magnolia

Web site: http://thesilentseed.com