By Cynthia Williamson, Special Writer
LAMBERTVILLE — Tim Groff’s passion for nature and everything that embodied it was rooted from a very young age when he would toil in the garden alongside his father, Robert Groff of Lambertville.
”Every soft, rainy day, every flower we smell, will remind of us you,” wrote his mother, Martha Groff of Chester. It was among several poignant eulogies written by family and friends to memorialize her son.
It is fitting that a fountain in his memory has been erected in the Mary E. Sheridan Park. A dedication ceremony is planned for Sept. 26, starting at 10 a.m., at the park on York Street.
Together with Friends of the Park members Lou Toboz and Ron Walker, the Kalmia Club of Lambertville has been working for the past couple years to restore one of the city’s three parks situated on the corner of York and George streets.
”I think it completes the park,” Mr. Toboz said, referring to the fountain. “It’s very simple and classic. We’re very much pleased with the way it looks.”
The elder Mr. Groff, who collaborated with Friends on the concept for a memorial, agreed his son would be pleased with it because he “loved Lambertville. It was his town.”
Mr. Groff drowned in the Swan Creek near the city’s Justice Complex on South Union Street in June 2009 in what authorities ruled as an unfortunate accident. Heavy rains that plagued the region at the time caused the Delaware River and its tributaries to overflow, causing the city’s low-lying areas to flood.
Mr. Groff believes his son’s innate curiosity about nature may have contributed to his untimely death.
”He was just so into nature,” the elder Mr. Groff said. “He was probably curious about the flood. He knew weather and patterns and all the different zones.”
Mr. Groff, who was 39 at the time of his death, was last seen alive June 29. He had been with friends at the Inn of the Hawke in Lambertville earlier in the evening but left alone around 2 a.m. It is presumed he was headed to his home on foot, about seven blocks away on North Union Street.
Along the way, he would have passed by the Swan Creek, whose banks had become swollen with water that overflowed onto the road along South Union Street.
Mr. Groff had crossed paths with his son on that fateful evening at the Porkyard, a small complex of businesses off Coryell Street. It is also where the younger Mr. Groff had recently opened an office for his fledging garden design firm, Garden Artistry.
When Mr. Groff was unable to reach his son by telephone in the days that followed their encounter, he initially thought his son had lost his cell phone.
As time dragged on, Mr. Groff said he realized, “something was wrong” and contacted authorities. The younger Mr. Groff’s body was discovered days later on July 5 in a spillway that adjoins the creek with the Delaware and Raritan Canal.
The younger Mr. Groff may be gone, but his legacy lives on in the gardens he created in Lambertville and beyond as well as the knowledge he imparted about all things that grow from soil.
”Everything he knew was self-taught,” the elder Mr. Groff said, remarking that his son knew the common as well as the scientific (Latin) names of the plants and trees he studied. “He had this tremendous photographic memory.”
Even as a youngster, Mr. Groff said his son was always curious and eager to learn. He often could be found holed up in a room reading the encyclopedia collection.
The younger Mr. Groff was a familiar around town. He would frequently begin his days at the Lambertville Trading Co. With a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other, he would sit on a bench outside the Bridge Street establishment and read or strike up a conversation with passersby.
”He could talk to anyone about anything,” Mr. Groff said. That was underscored when he brought along his then teen-age son on a business trip to the Northeast. The pair visited a rhododendron garden where the younger Mr. Groff was eager to converse with a horticulturist to learn all he could about the plant.
The younger Mr. Groff was born in Boulder, Co. He lived in the Bahamas with his family until about the age of 4 when they relocated to the Chester-Mendham area of New Jersey.
He was the oldest of three children — Gregory, an artist residing in San Francisco, and Amy, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. Another sibling, Christopher, died in infancy.
A 1984 graduate of Mendham High School, Mr. Groff earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Richmond. He worked as an account executive for a company that sold goods to home improvement stores, which is how he became familiar with Lambertville. The city was central to the territory he covered that extended from New England to the Mid-Atlantic region.
Eventually, Mr. Groff made Lambertville his home. Initially, he rented an apartment. Later, he partnered with his father to purchase property on North Union Street where the younger Mr. Groff occupied one of the three rental units.
He transformed a plot of ground at the address to a garden that was featured on the Kalmia Club annual Hidden Gardens of Lambertville tour. He also designed a garden for the Princeton Designer House tour and taught horticulture classes at Delaware Valley College.
Though entrenched in the corporate world, it was evident that Mr. Groff’s passion for garden design never waned. At the urging of his father, he left his job to start Garden Artistry.
”I told him, ‘Look, Tim, if that’s your passion, you must do it,’” the elder Mr. Groff recalls telling his son.
Mr. Groff is hopeful that the contributions his son made to nature will continue through The Tim Groff Garden Artistry Foundation established in his memory. The purpose of the Foundation is to fund garden-design scholarships as well as support public gardens in Lambertville.
Those who would like to learn more about the Foundation should contact Mr. Groff at 908-256-3800.

