Laura's Garden

     On May 8 and 9 the Atlanta Botanical Garden will sponsor its traditional Mother's Day tour of gardens in Atlanta. My mother would be so proud to know that my sister Laura was asked to have her garden on this year's tour. What an enormous honor for Laura and what a tribute to the garden she has created at her home.

    In fact, it was even Laura's home that was the featured photo on the poster.

She told me even weeks ago that people were beginning to stop in front of her house to admire her garden and, if she's there working in the yard, to tell her how beautiful it is. Maybe at the time of the photo the front yard was "finished," but I know Laura has worked and worked in the back yard, the main garden, even since then. She worked, she said, six hours a day for weeks. Like her granddaughter, I wondered what she could be doing all day long in the garden. Weeding and planting I understand. Working on drip irrigation is a huge chore in my garden, but she doesn't need that in Georgia. 

What she said was, "There's the digging and the soil amending, the planting and pruning, the feeding and watering, the moving and moving back. To say nothing of the dreaming, planning, fussing, and cajoling that goes on."

    She loves having become intimately familiar with every inch of ground in her yard. She loves having the close association with her working partner, Nature. When the night temperature suddenly plunged into the twenties, she despaired of losing flowers she had thought would be ready for the Mother's Day tour, but she knew it was up to Nature. The damage was less than she had feared; the garden recovered as though there had been no killing frost, and Nature smiled at her efforts again.

    I am sure there will be other gorgeous gardens on the tour, but I am also certain that hers will be the talk of the town because it isn't just the flowers in bloom and the graceful arrangements of trees, ferns, and bushes that make her garden a joy. It's the special imaginative touches that make the difference. Many gardeners might have a garden gnome keeping watch somewhere, as she does, but I doubt that anywhere else will you find a fairy house, built for the third partner in what Laura calls the triumvirate of her garden: herself, Nature, and the fairy godmother. It is made of sticks and pine bark, with a moss roof, tiny windows, and a chimney of red pebbles caulked with lichen. In front of it is a tiny piano for the fairy to play music to the bees and butterflies and a badminton court for a game when her fairy friends come over. The walkway from the gate to the house is lined with crystals and blue and purple shiny rocks.

    Any garden is beautiful. Laura's garden is also an enchantment.

    Laura has gardened this year with May 8 and 9 in mind, that all flowers—iris, foxglove, peonies (from our grandmother's garden), snapdragons, roses, zinnias—

will be in full bloom on those days, given cooperation from the other two parts of the triumvirate, of course. (The fairy godmother is sure to help. Nature is the finicky partner.) Laura has assured me that a host of other flowers will be in bloom when I come to visit in June—black-eyed Susans, summer phlox, alstroemeria, Japanese asters.

    What I look forward to most is the new "sisters' nook" she created at the back of the garden in a spot previously left on its own.

She had planned to put in all woodland natives but, she told me, when $100 worth of plants only filled a tiny space, she pulled stuff out of the compost (lenten roses and Japanese painted ferns) and transplanted ferns from her house on Lake Lanier. Adding a chair and small table turned it into her favorite place to sit with a cup of tea when she finally takes a break from hauling, planting, composting, digging, and weeding. With a second chair at the table, I dream of having a cup of tea with my sister in her gorgeous garden when I come to visit. And if we are quiet after our excited chatter and my exclamations about how beautiful her garden is, maybe we can hear the fairy godmother playing Chopin at her piano.

To read Laura's own words about her garden, go to her post, "Sprucing up the Garden," on naturebasedblog.com.