GARDENING FOR LOVEA Texas horticulturist restores his great-great

grandparents' home and garden

Greg Grant

of the best spondence with country gardeners whoadvertise their !1owers in the Southernmarket bulletins and who, in her words,"garden for love." The book is filledwith stories, local names, and properidentifications for numerous pass-alongSouthern plants. Pass-along plants are

basically "hand-me-downs" - plantspassed from one generation to another,or from one friendly gardener to thenext.

As the "baby boy" among four chil-dren, each a year apart, I'm quite familiarwith hand-me-downs. I naturally learned

garden writers the South has everknlwn was Elizabeth Lawrence of

orth Carolina. Among the books shewrote, my very favorite is GardeningJor Love, which was published posthu-mously in 1987. It's about her corre-

16 Neil Sperry's Gardens July I August 2012

f------Z<rruuw

"u

Rare fall color of a post oak provides the backdrop for therestored com crib and bam.

to live with numerous discarded itemsfrom my two older brothers. However,my most prized pass-alongs didn't comefrom my brothers, but from my maternalgrandparents instead.

My mother's parents were GeorgiaMarquette Emanis and Rebel EloyEmanis. Everybody called her "Coot,"and he went by Eloy. I simply calledthem Grandmother and Pappaw. Iloved them dearly and spent as muchtime with them at their old farmhousein Deep East Texas as I could. TheyJuly I August 2012

were as poor as could be, but I cer-tainly never knew it. The best days ofmy childhood were spent in that littleArcadia community. Appropriately,Arcadia was from Greek mythologyand became synonymous with heavenon earth. It certainly was for me. Mygrandparents' old house once belongedto my grandmother's grandparents,and ended up being passed on to me.I promised my grandmother I wouldlook after it and will go to my gravedoing so.

When my great-aunt and -uncleowned the house in the 1940s, theyclosed the open "dog run" through themiddle and lowered the ceilings to makethe rooms easier to cool. After Arcadiagot electricity in 1949, folks consideredthese vernacular "dog trot" houses ~ithopen breezeways obsolete. Of course,the dogtrot houses were constructed totolerate the long, hot summers in theSouth and at one time were a domi-nant floor plan in the southeastern U.S.Unfortunately, few of them remain. Andyes, dogs did run and trot through them.

From the time I was a kid, I plannedto restore my grandparent's old houseto its condition when my great-greatgrandparents lived in it. In 2010 mydream finally came true. In addition toopening the dogtrot back up and raisingthe ceilings back to their original height,I removed a lean-to room on the back,replaced aluminum storm windows thathad been added on the back and sides,and buried the distracting power linesthat lead to the house.

Of course, I was born: a gardener,and I live to grow both edibles and

Neil Sperry's Gardens 17

I

Top: Picturesque peony poppies flank the big,open porch.

Bottom: Greg~ nostalgic plantings include a'Peggy Martin' climber, the vigorous rose famed

for its survival story following HurricaneKatrina.

ornamentals. It was at this very housewhere my Pappaw taught me how togrow vegetables and my Grandmothertaught me the names of the wildflow-ers and pass-along plants. So, of course,I needed a new garden to go with the

18 Neil Sperry's Gardens

restored house. I had lived in the houseseveral decades and had had numeroustemporary gardens before, but I alwaysknew I eventually wanted a "permanent"old-fashioned cottage garden in frontand a "kitchen garden" out back for goodthings to eat.

Long before the house was restored,I propagated cuttings from a favoritelilac-purple crape myrtle at a nearbyhomeplace and planted an allee of themleading up to the house. I figured aslong as I had a big open porch runningthrough the middle of my house, I mightas well accentuate it. Originally I plantedthem twice too dense and later removedevery other one so they'd have room tomature. Of course, I never top them (andnever will) and will allow them to growinto the typical picturesque crape myrtleshape. I also framed each side of thehouse with two pink crape myrtles prop-agated from the old Emanis homeplacein the woods up the road. One reason Ichose these two old indica crape myrtle

July I August 2012

selections is that, unlike many others,they both survived the zero-degree tem-peratures of the early 1980s. I wantedthem to be permanent as well.

The relatively small front garden iscomposed mostly of Texas-tough plantsthat I've developed. I use them forcutting stock for our famous annualStephen F Austin Gardens plant sales.Although I do allow for a few reseedingannuals, my cottage garden is composedprimarily of warm-season perennials. It'smostly a summer butterfly and hum-mingbird garden that I can enjoy whilesitting on the porch. After shoulder sur-gery, two neck surgeries, back surgery,and hip surgery, I figured I'd better getsome things in the ground that didn'tneed replacing. I also have a color themethat excludes yellow. It's not that I haveanything against yellow; quite the oppo-site. After my beloved golden jonquilsfinish blooming in the early spring, Ibanish the color for the rest of the year.In my mind, no other plant can do thecolor justice after that show of beautyand fragrance.

I still grow row-crop vegetables onone side of the house, the same placemy grandparents grew them. I still makemy rows with a tiller, furrow irrigate,and grow yummy peas and corn just like

July I August 2012

Double-loop ornamentalfencing and beds over-flowing with warm-sea-son annuals and perenni-als recall the grace of anearlier time.

they taught me. Mylittle kitchen gardenin back is just beingfinished, and it fea-tures my lifetime col-lection of self-madetire planters filledwith potting soil andconnected by dripirrigation. I grow ber-ries, asparagus, toma-toes, peppers, greenbeans, cucumbers,spinach, herbs, andassorted other culi-nary delights there.Its kind of tacky, butin East Texas that's acompliment.

Behind thehouse, I planted eight acres of pine treesand will spend the rest of my life recreat-ing an early East Texas open pine forest.My Pap paw was quite an outdoorsmanand loved the woods, so I've dubbed itthe "Rebel Eloy Emanis Pine Savannaand Bird Sanctuary" To encourage nativegrasses and an open understory thatattracts pine savanna species like pinewarblers and brown-headed nuthatches,I conduct an annual control burn andregularly thin the pines to allow in moresunlight. The evergreen forest also servesas a dark green curtain behind myoidfamily home and cottage garden.

There's not a day that goes bythat I don't think about how much Iloved my grandparents and how muchthey loved me. And having the uniqueopportunity to live my life in their veryhouse and grow roots in the same soilthey did, is literally a dream come true.It's a true labor of love and I'm forevergrateful. lIB

About the author: Greg Grant is ahorticulturist at Stephen F Austin Gardensin Nacogdoches, author of Growing Fruitsand Vegetable in Texas, and co-author ofHeirloom Gardening in the South.

From:Your Garden

To:You (in your kitchen)

Email Subject:Some advice for you

You have spent all that timecaring for me... protecting mefrom the elements ... Wateringme during those hot months ..."reap" the rewards - EAT inSTYLE!

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Neil Sperry's Gardens 19