Garden Gate
The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection
The Garden Gate was broadcast from Nashville and hosted by “The Old Dirt Dobber,” Tom Williams. He dispensed gardening advice in response to questions submitted by listeners. It is claimed he received up to 40,000 letters each week. In each program, he would award “The Order of the Green Thumb” to a gardener nominated by listeners. At the close of the program, he would read a poem submitted by a listener. When it came to gardening, Williams knew what he was talking about. He was a developer of iris plants, breeding a new variety in 1944 named “The Dinah Shore” in honor of the singer. She started at the same radio station years before at the same time that Williams did. One episode in the Hehn collection is from October 16, 1948. Williams talks about talk about birds and pink dogwood trees. At the end of the program there is brief silence and then the beginning of a kid’s sports program, Red Barber’s Clubhouse . The clip is about one and a half minutes. The other is believed to be from September 25, 1948 based on the teases for other programs. The recording begins with the end of the preceding program on the network and is followed by the beginning of Red Barber's Clubhouse with the guest as violinist Fritz Kreisler. He was performing in Michigan at the time, which is one of the facts used to date the program. * * * These recordings are part of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection. Mr. Hehn (1931-2020) was a pioneering collector of radio recordings when the hobby emerged in the 1960s. Digitizing his collection of reel tapes and discs is the effort of a wide range of North American volunteers, and includes assistance of some international collectors. The groups supporting this effort with their funds, time, technology and skills are the Old Time Radio Researchers and a small group of transcription disc preservationists who refer to themselves as the "The Knights of the Turning Table."
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.