Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: April 1990 Volume 28 Number 2, Pages 79–80

Lilac Farm

Janet Malin

Page 79

Lilac Farm was situated on the south side of Yellow Springs Road, between the entrance to Page's Willow Spring Farm on the east and the Salem Cemetery on the west.

Its owners were French, Francois Supiot and Sons, I believe there were several brothers.

They were market gardeners, and grew watercress; short, fat white asparagus; delicious celery, radishes, lettuce, and rutabagas; and also red and black raspberries,, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables. They believed that the fertile limestone soil and lime content of the water in the Great Valley were the best for growing vegetables. Among the other fruits they grew were Beurre d'Anjou pears; they were very large, and when fully ripened were sweet and juicy, with a fine texture, and were truly "buttery". They also raised large sweet cherries and currants, red and black.

Besides the fruits and vegetables, the Supiots also grew flowers of every sort, and had imported many varieties of lilac from France. The parent stock of these various lilacs had originally come from Persia. They were of various colors not found in the usual lilacs in the door yards of farmhouses in this area that had been transplanted from England by the early settlers who came here.

Page 80

Another of the plants they brought with them was pampas grass, a sort of ornamental grass. It matures in the fall with a long fluffy plume-like top. In the early part of this century it was a favorite; when dry, many people took it inside the house in the fall and winter, after the summer flowers were gone. It was originally a native of the South American pampus hence its name or grasslands, somewhat like our prairies or the steppes of Russia.

The Supiot brothers had a produce stand on Haverford Road, located, as nearly as I can remember, east of Ardmore and Wynnewood on the other side of City Line. A big sign FRANCOIS SUPIOT & SONS, MARKET GARDENERS was on the front, on the right hand side of the road after you traveled past City Line. My mother had a wealthy friend who summered in Wynnewood, and each Friday morning she would send her coachman and cook to buy vegetables and other produce for her table from them. When she returned to Philadelphia in the fall she would place orders for those vegetables and fruits that matured later in the fall, because they were so good.

When my father learned about the Buerre d'Anjou pears, he asked Mr. Supiot where he could obtain a tree. He was able to get one at Hoopes Brothers and Thomas, a very good nursery in West Chester. It was a dwarf pear tree, but the pears grew so large that one of them would just fit into a quart strawberry box!

The pampas grass reseeded itself, and its seeds were borne and scattered by the wind throughout the area. Pampas grass is still found, growing "wild", in many parts of the Chester Valley, even as far east as Bridgeport, and particularly in places that are uncultivated or waste land. Some people consider it a scourge, but it was originally grown to be ornamental.