Real gardeners are passionate about what they do. So are historic preservationists. When you put the two together, you have a gung ho bunch of folks. The two go together in Selma, Alabama for the Pilgrimage Weekend, but with a different twist. They saw historic places, but they were looking at the bushes, the bulbs and the bones of the gardens.
I am a born again gardener. I have always loved flowers – picking and arranging them, but only in the past few years has that translated into a passion for growing them. I have three friends that influenced my rebirth into gardening. They all had gardens that they loved tending. Just seeing these three doing the care and feeding of the garden awakened something in me. I decided to try it. Fortunately, I live in an old house with good dirt, so it worked. Last summer’s drought made me have second thoughts about flower gardening, but here it is spring and I have the fever again. Naturally, I signed on for the tour.
This time of the year is the season of transition. We have a lovely late winter flowering time. Nothing is more beautiful than a camellia bush. I think the play should have been Steel Camellias instead of magnolia. Camellias look so fragile, but they are so tough. They will last for generations with very little care. We saw some great ones on the tour. They are so common. That they weren’t even considered a focal point. There were bulbs by the hundreds, too. We call it naturalized when they go wild on a hillside. They were naturalized all over the place.
We, of course, visited historic landmarks. We started at the Episcopal Church. We toured the church and saw Tiffany stained glass windows designed by local artist Claire Weaver Parrish, who worked for Tiffany at the turn of the 20th century. We then visited the Live Oak Cemetery where we were entertained by Alabama’s Storyteller, Kathryn Tucker Windham. She laughs when someone asks her to speak to a garden tour. She is not a gardener per se, but she spins great tales about people who are. She actually does have a garden now, shared with her neighbor, artist “Tin Man” Charlie Lucas. They have a vegetable garden that is full of Charlie’s metal sculptures. We heard her family stories and then toured the cemetery, hearing about the interesting people buried there. My favorite grave was that of Mary Todd Lincoln’s sister Elodie who smuggled medical supplies from Washington back to Selma for the Confederacy. She was finally banned from the White House as a result. The life sized statue at her grave is supposed to be a likeness. If it is, she was a lot prettier then her sister.
We toured Keenan’s Mill historic site and had a picnic there. We also toured an antebellum garden owned by the same family as well as “Miss Libba’s” garden that she started when she left the old house and built a new one twenty five years ago. She said the garden just evolved over time. She never meant to have one so big, but she had a passion for plants and a good yard man, so the garden just grew. I have included several pictures of her gardens as well as some of the antebellum house and Keenan’s Mill. All this was arranged by Gery Anderson, a local dentist with a passion for preservation and his home town of Selma.
We ended the tour at Sturvidant Hall, Selma’s official mansion. The gardens there are being lovingly restored by volunteers.
I came home with a renewed conviction that I love rural Southwest Alabama’s climate. We have already had one great flowering season and are getting ready for another. I’d feel cheated if I lived somewhere that the ground didn’t thaw ‘til early June. I love all the seasons of the garden and look forward to them all – we’ve got at least three more this year. Come see for yourself. Now would be a good time. The wisteria is coming into its own. It is as prolific as genteel kudzu. It escaped from many old house places and has blanketed the woods. In fact, over the next year or so, I’m going to map out a wisteria trail through the region. I can look out my window right now and see it. It is lavender and lovely dancing in the treetops.
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