In 1854, David Hill came to the Midwest in search of new plants. He was sent from the Royal Botanic Gardens of England to Dundee to find William Hill, who was growing nursery stock and running an orchard.
David Hill was the great-grandfather of Platt Hill of St. Charles, who owns Platt Hill Nurseries in Bloomingdale and Carpentersville.
How David Hill eventually found William Hill (they were not related) is a story Platt Hill loves to tell.
It seems that when David Hill arrived in town, a horse pulling a carriage with a young woman driver got spooked and took off, a dangerous thing in those days. But David Hill was able to rein in the runaway and save the young woman, who turned out to be Margaret Hill, William Hill’s daughter. She invited him to lunch, and that’s how David got to meet William.
After that, David never returned to England. He fell in love with Margaret, married her and started his own nursery business. The four sons of David inherited the business, and it remained in the family until 1980, when it was sold.
Platt once worked in the financial services industry, but when the stock market took a downturn, he went back, he said, to pulling weeds, which he knew well. Perhaps destiny led him as well as his great-grandfather.
“Sometimes I think there’s an invisible hand guiding me,” Platt said. “I have a number of friends who are stockbrokers, and I realize now I wouldn’t have been happy.”
