Branching Out

New growth at New Yorker

Dorothy Parker, a onetime New Yorker regular, was never at a loss for a good line. When challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence, she instantly replied: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." Insiders at The New Yorker are chuckling again over that gag. The prosperous, sophisticated weekly (circ. 504,000) has, for the first time in its 56-year history, acquired another publication: Horticulture magazine (circ.104,000), a 77-year-old gardening monthly published by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

The purchase was the brainstorm of Eliot Wadsworth II, 39, owner of White Flower Farm, a $3 million-a-year mail-order nursery in Litchfield, Conn. White Flower has advertised in Horticulture "almost forever," and in The New Yorker nearly as long. The New Yorker assumes 60% ownership, while Wadsworth, a Harvard M.B.A., gains a 40% interest and editorial control. The editorial staff of two, who work among potted plants in a two-story red-brick gingerbread Boston building, will not be pruned. Both of them go on quietly sprouting seasonal articles ("Make Way for Anthuriums") and such regular features as tips for beginning gardeners ("What Went Wrong?").

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