There’s a story Margaret Orr likes to tell about the genesis of her garden: “We had just bought the house,” the longtime WDSU-TV meteorologist recalled. “I was a young thing, had one child (her daughter, Kathleen, now in her 20s) and was pregnant with my boy (Alden, also now in his 20s). “This little man — Jake Noack, who was in his 70s — was walking by and said, ‘I love your garden.’ And I looked at him and I looked at my house, and I said, ‘I don’t have a garden.’ And he said, ‘I know, that’s the point: You need a garden.’ “
Feast with the Stars
What: Margaret Orr will receive Parkway Partners’ Green Spirit Award at its Feast with the Stars patron party. She is being honored for her support of community gardening and beautification projects. Feast with the Stars is Parkway Partners‘ annual fundraising gala.
When: The patron party will be Oct. 10, 6 to 8 p.m, and the Feast with the Stars jazz brunch gala will be Oct. 13, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Where: The patron party will be held at Callan Contemporary Art Gallery, 518 Julia St. The jazz brunch gala will be held at Gallier Hall.
Tickets: $75 for the jazz brunch and $125 for both the patron party and the jazz brunch at www.parkwaypartnersnola.org or 504.620.2224.
From that encounter grew a long, fruitful relationship with gardening, one she has carried privately and publicly via her former gardening segments on WDSU’s morning show and, more recently, her Twitter feed. Today, the gardens at Orr’s Lakefront area home are a testament to that abiding love, which she says brings her in touch with the circle of life.
“To me, gardening brings you closer to God,” she said. “You see life and death and rebirth in the world. That’s why I love butterflies. It’s the rebirth and the changes we go through.”
Orr’s garden has changed considerably since she and her husband bought the property 26 years ago.
“I had three yucca plants in the front, and they were yuck. I hated them,” she said.
Noack, Orr’s neighbor who gave her a gentle kick in the pants about the need for landscaping (he has since died), had received several home-garden awards over the years. He offered to help her create her first garden. They went to a nursery together, where the salesperson asked Orr what kinds of plants she liked.
“I said, ‘I don’t know,'” Orr remembered, laughing. “I didn’t know anything about gardening.”
But garden they did. “We put out the dirt, we planted the plants, and I was addicted.”
At the time, around 1985, Orr was co-host of WDSU’s morning show, “Breakfast Edition.” Eager to learn more about her new hobby and share her lessons with the morning viewers, she began interviewing gardeners, landscapers and other agricultural experts for the recurring segment “Margaret’s Garden.”
“I did them once a week, and that’s how I learned about gardening,” she said, naming experts such as horticulturist Melinda Taylor, who has worked for Walt Disney World and the New Orleans Botanical Garden at City Park, garden columnist Dan Gill and Paul Soniat, director of the City Park botanical garden. “I learned what works.”
The lessons included basic landscape maintenance, information about growing seasons and general care. Taylor taught her how to prevent weeds by placing sheets of cardboard between plants and covering with pine straw. Another expert taught her about roses and the power of compost.
Today, she uses a row of fuchsia Knockout roses to create a bold line between the rear of the front lawn and the front porch, where Orr sits every morning sipping her coffee, tracking the weather and interacting with her followers on Twitter. She also makes her own nutrient-rich compost and turns fall leaves into mulch by storing them in ventilated bags in a corner of her backyard.
Though her television work Orr also learned specifics on plant varieties that helped inform her personal gardening decisions. Taylor introduced Orr to the distinctive Natchez crape myrtle with white blossoms and a two-toned, peeling bark. Orr uses them to line and provide shade to the right side of her property, front and back.
Severin Dowdy, who accompanied Orr on several trips to Longue Vue House and Gardens, helped her pick out a “bloodgood” Japanese maple and sago palm for the corner bed fronting the street.
Orr learned what flowers attract butterflies (pentas, purple coneflower, lavender, salvia, zinnia, ageratum and black-eyed Susans, among others) and hummingbirds. “They love red and orange,” Orr wrote in an e-mail. “The tubular plants are the best. Plant salvia, zinnias, hibiscus . . . foxglove, nicotiana, to name a few.”
She also learned what she doesn’t like. For instance, “I hate begonias,” she said. “They attract snails. How do you get rid of snails? You put out little saucers of beer, and they drown. I’m not doing that to the stupid snails. I am not going to kill a snail, OK? I’m just not going to do it. So I hate begonias.”
Though Orr absorbed as much knowledge as she could through her television work, her approach to gardening through the years has been “trial and error,” she said. Her front yard has a garden-heavy layout, with beds along the perimeter and a large centerpiece bed brimming with color and variation.
Early on she adopted a palette of pinks, blues and purples, which she hypes up during the flower-heavy seasons, early fall and spring. The colors are concentrated in the large, octagonal central bed in the front lawn, which features the conical blossoms of pink Angelonia, bulbous pink pentas — “A great summer plant,” Orr said — cheery purple aster and more, all bustling in crowded concord.
A yellow rose bush provides height to the center and serves as a nod to Orr’s Texas roots. (Her parents and grandparents lived in Bryan, Texas.) A simple fountain sits in the middle of the bed, hugged by a rogue red salvia that Orr gladly allowed to come up.
“I love volunteers,” she said, referring to plants that drop into landscapes via wind, wildlife or other carriers. Orr likes to use as many of them as she can, sometimes allowing them to stay in place or moving them to a better spot.
“I will have rudbeckias (black-eyed Susans) growing in the grass and dig them up and put them somewhere else, because the seeds just go everywhere.”
Orr’s love of serendipitous finds extends beyond plants. Her side yard features a metal butterfly chair, which a neighbor had bought at a garage sale but decided not to keep. Orr was happy to give it a home. The cherub statue in the side yard bed was her grandmother’s.
The side yard also features boxwoods and mondo grass. “I planted them in Xs and Os, because they’re hugs and kisses from God,” she said.
The beds along the left side of the yard continue the pink, purple and blue theme with torenia (also sometimes called wishbone flowers) in all those colors, purple cone flower and purple salvia.
In the spring, she’ll plant poppies, foxglove, bachelor’s buttons, dianthus, pink snapdragons and irises — one of her favorites. On the porch, fuchsia and purple bougainvilleas sit in planters, while spindly lemongrass softens the transition from the porch and front yard to the side walkway.
Just as Orr encouraged “Breakfast Edition” viewers to send photos of their own gardens to be featured on the show’s “Garden of the Month” segment, Orr receives countless images of fans’ outdoor landscapes via Twitter. Interacting with people, fans or experts, who love nature — be it the weather or a pretty flower — is one of her greatest pleasures.
“Sitting on the porch this morning with the boys (her dog, Bleu, and her daughter Grace’s dog, Sunny) running around the yard, I saw a hummingbird, Gulf Fritillary and swallowtail butterflies, a female cardinal and a couple of blue jays,” Orr wrote in an e-mail. “There was a bit of a breeze playing music in the wind chime. The humidity was low, the sun was shining, and it was just a beautiful morning. This is where I Tweet in the morning. It’s my little piece of paradise.”
****
Parkway Partners Green Spirit award
A longtime supporter of community landscaping and beautification projects, Orr will receive Parkway Partners’ Green Spirit award on Thursday, Oct. 10, as part of its Feast with the Stars patron party.
Orr is being honored for her work with “neutral ground and garden projects, including the sunken gardens on Canal Boulevard, community and schoolyard gardens,” Jean Fahr, Parkway Partners executive director, said in an email.
The neutral ground adoption program was just beginning around 1989 when Orr “walked door to door on Canal Boulevard with Parkway Partners’ founder Flo Schornstein,” Fahr said. “Today the neutral ground is adopted by the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association and its recent restoration was spearheaded by Al Petrie and the LCIA Green Space committee after Hurricane Katrina.”
Orr also was a supporter of Parkway Partners’ schoolyard garden program, Sow Grow.
Speak Your Mind