In my fifteen years on the road to becoming a gardener, I have been fortunate to travel with the help, advice and inspiration of a number of friends and professionals from landscape designers to experts on lighting and irrigation. When it came to the elements of my garden that I treasure the most, it took a carpenter.
Our talented friend Eddie Robinson has created for us with hammer and nails around two houses over thirty years, and it’s in the garden that I most appreciate his design talents as well as his construction expertise.
Weeds were twelve feet high when we bought our property.
In 1997, when we bought our house on the top of Red Mountain, along with two vacant city view lots across the street, the once formal gardens had returned to nature. I didn’t know beans about gardening, and the first landscape architect I consulted bluntly described our jungle in one word, “hopeless.”
Too dumb to know better, I charged on. As I amassed the usual gardener’s collection of shovels, rakes, fertilizers and bug and weed foe fighters, the walk-in kitchen pantry began to resemble a garden center, and my husband expressed concern that the Round-up resided on the same shelf with the Rice Krispies.
Next to our guest house a concrete pad remained from a long gone green house. A base in place cries out for building something, and Eddie came up with a plan for a potting shed so perfectly compatible with the existing little stone cottage that it could have been part of the original 1922 design.
Cottage with potting shed. Eddie and I checked out books from the library at the Botanical Gardens for ideas for creating an interior whimsical as well as functional. On a budget, we haunted the sale area of Home Depot for windows, a French door, a skylight. Out of wood found on a construction scrap pile he crafted a beautiful bench. My dad, an inveterate scavenger of curbside discards, was the source of a weathervane snagged and saved “just in case we ever need it.” A quotation from Tennyson and straw garden hats accentuate rough framed walls.
In the realm of discards, for years people had treated the vacant lots across the street from our house as a handy landfill. Venturing into the wasteland of twelve foot tall weeds, we found enough cans and bottles to open our own recycling center, old tires, a broken baby buggy, lots of things that can’t be mentioned in a polite publication.
To prevent the “tourists” who nightly arrive to enjoy the city view from parking on the property like it was a drive-in theatre, the previous owners had sunk iron railroad ties along the curb. Weeds cleared, as the grass seeds took root and carpeted a lawn, every weekend my husband and I trolled neighborhoods scouting fences. A rustic split rail provided a nice counterpoint to the country Tudor architecture of our house.
In a perfect example of a garden as an ever evolving work-in-progress, my garden guru Jason Powell of Petals from the Past and I first tried a simple design of vintage Wills Scarlet roses planted along the fence posts.
“Wills Scarlet” is one of Jason Powell’s favorite varieties of vintage roses.
As Jason well knows, when it comes to the garden, I am never satisfied with simple. Taking a walk in Kennebunkport, Maine, I serendipitously stumbled onto a lush English curbside garden. Excitedly emailing images to Jason, he responded, “Perfect! If only Alabama had the same climate as the coastal northeast.”
Wills Scarlet roses relocated from fence line to a bed ot their own.
Because the ridge of Red Mountain is subject to harsh climactic conditions, from broiling sun to gale force winds, Jason instead chose plants suitable for the prairies of Texas. With phlox mimicking lilacs, hardy roses, and a variety of perennials running 210′ along the fence, he achieved the look I loved in that New England mixed border.
Don Juan roses paired with white Texas salvia.
Purple coneflowers put on a summer long show.
We were on our way, but both Jason and I agreed that something was still lacking. Enter Eddie and back to poring over books from the BBG Library. What we needed was the vertical element of an arbor with a gate.
Two days before hundreds of people were expected for a Garden Conservatory tour of our garden, my husband was surprised to find Eddie at our breakfast room table along with the cereal. He just shook his head and stumbled off to work as Eddie and I proclaimed, “We’re building something! In forty eight hours!”
Eddie Robinson relaxes after crafting an arbor in less than two days.
Of all of the wonderful things Eddie has given us over 30 years of “let’s build something!” nothing has equaled the ongoing pleasure that we, along with the numbers of people who stroll our street, take from our arbor.
The arbor is centered along a 210 foot border garden and frames a city view. Eddie crafted the arbor out of wood with a story behind it that transforms simple into special. Several decades before, Eddie had been involved in a commercial construction project on Southside that required cutting down a 200 year old cedar tree. Unwilling to let such a magnificent piece of nature die in vain, Eddie hauled away the tree, and hauled it around through multiple moves for more than 20 years, in reserve for just the right project.After trying a variety of vines, Jason suggested crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) as an evergreen that blooms profusely in spring.
Last weekend we witnessed the latest in a continuing series of marriage proposals taking place under our arbor. Countless brides have used it as a frame for taking engagement and wedding photographs, numerous family Christmas card photos, of families whose names we don’t even know, have posed under it. All of the random people with whom we have shared our arbor’s provenance agree that there’s an element of magic in recycling an ancient tree to a lasting statement of beauty.
For fifteen years we have sought a solution for fencing two Golden Retrievers into our back yard, which abuts a large piece of property, only part of which we own. Fences may make good neighbors, but it’s not legal, nor cost effective, to fence off the neighbor’s property.
In May two happy events coincided. Our family welcomed a five year old Golden Retriever, whose kennel name we planned to change, and Mississippi garden historian Susan Haltom came to town as the featured speaker for events benefiting the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and the Literacy Council, the latter a garden party at our house.
Reading Susan’s marvelous book, One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place, the chronicle of her ten year restoration of the iconic author’s Jackson garden, on page 223 I found my fence.
Eddie once again at the breakfast table, sketching away, my patient husband mumbled, “I guess we’re building something. Has anyone told him that we have 100 people coming for tea tomorrow?”
The new Golden Retriever, rechristened, appropriately, Eudora, arrived along with a heavenly scented stack of cedar.
New back yard fence and arbor, inspired by a design from Eudora Welty’s garden.
Eddie again accented my garden with something as beautifully crafted as fine furniture, built to last longer than we will, a legacy for the future gardeners, and their dogs, who will follow us, just as I treasure old bulbs and peonies, returning every spring like thank you notes from the ladies who began this garden 90 years ago.
The rocky top of Red Mountain restricts the spots where I can dig a hole without the help of a jackhammer. As always, I turned to the creative landscape designers at Petals from the Past. Shelley Powell advised me to mix up the fence softening message with a combination of Confederate jasmine, a Ruth’s Red climbing rose, an Endless Summer hydrangea, and a passion flower vine called “Anne’s Purple” that is already taking off like Jack’s beanstalk and rewarding me with purple blooms that are nothing short of amazing. Canine Eudora’s favorite spot for a summer afternoon nap is a shady spot next to “her” fence.
An arbor and garden make a fence an invitation rather than a barrier as a feature in the garden. Purple passion flower.
Eudora and Confederate jasmine.
When she and her companion Golden Sunshine and I work on our border garden across the street, Eudora has another naptime hideaway, our duplex dog house, designed and built, of course, by Eddie.
Eudora and Sunshine’s duplex doghouse, designed and built by Eddie Robinson.
I have found that the input of others is crucial in the evolution of a garden, whether it’s enjoying the irises along the fence that were passalong plant gifts from a friend, or taking advantage of the keen design instincts of professionals like Jason and Shelley Powell coupled with historical garden information gleaned from writers like Susan Haltom.
And, in my garden, it took a carpenter to make it complete.
Baby wrens are already nesting along “Eudora’s fence.”
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