Growing up in Noxubee County, Marcia Weber knew that she wanted to travel the world and share gardens with others from an early age.

As a child, one of the members of her now-decommissioned Methodist Church went on a trip sponsored by the Farm Bureau Agency. When he came back, he shared slides with the entire church, showing what he had seen in Europe – and changing the course of Weber’s life.

“I came away from looking at those slides, and … I thought that that’s what I wanted to do one day,” Weber said during a joint meeting of Belle Fleur, Northwood and Columbus garden clubs on Tuesday morning. “I wanted to go someplace and travel. And I wanted to bring things back. Pictures that would inspire other people.”

Weber got her bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Mississippi State University before leaving the area to go to Atlanta, Georgia. At the time, she said, she didn’t believe the move would be permanent. But she has now been there for 49 years, and has started her own landscape architecture and garden design firm, Gardens to Love.

“When I left for Atlanta, I said ‘I’m going away for five years. I’m going to seek my fame and fortune. And then I’m coming home to Mississippi.’ And that’s still my line,” Weber joked.

As inspiration for the gardens she designs in Atlanta, Weber often travels around the world, getting ideas from gardens she sees and bringing them back to the United States. She shared some of those photos with the garden clubs, hoping to also bring this inspiration to Mississippi.

Weber displayed photos she has taken in Mexico, Russia, England, the Netherlands, Jordan, France, Japan, Portugal, France and Brazil. Flipping through her slides, Weber pointed out some of the design elements that gardeners across the world use.

Lessons learned

One of the major themes in the gardens Weber displayed was the use of native elements to each area in their designs. This included native plants, and plants that are already suited to the environment they are being planted in.

For Mississippi, Weber recommended planting cotton, okra, hibiscus, crinum lilies, privet or anything native to Africa or the Caribbean, since many of those plants can survive with little water.

“It’s a good idea to start thinking of how we can enhance what we already have,” Weber said.

But this also included stone. For example, some gardeners in Mississippi tend to use more brick, she said, while Atlanta gardeners tend to use more stone. When she first arrived in Georgia, she didn’t understand why that was the case, but she eventually realized how plentiful stone is in Atlanta due to Stone Mountain, and how plentiful clay is in Mississippi to build bricks.

In the same way, gardeners across the world used whatever was most available to them when creating pathways. Any kind of brick, stone or rubble can be used, Weber said, to create interesting areas and sight lines in a garden.

Weber also emphasized repetition of form in a garden, showing rows of rounded bushes, plant pots or even repeating straight hedge rows as examples of how that can be accomplished.

Perhaps her most repeated advice, though, was to give a garden a place to sit and be enjoyed.

“Always remember to put a bench in your garden,” Weber said.

But while Weber emphasized what gardeners had on hand, she also highlighted some of the incredible feats gardeners can accomplish when they put their minds to it.

One photo she displayed from her trip to Normandy, France displayed what appeared to be an empty lawn with two rows of hedges and trees on either side of it. But there was much more to the sight than first met the eye.

“The man who bought the chateau didn’t like the view out here,” Weber said. “It was a view of a road and power lines. And he decided to change the view. He brought in 600 truck loads of soil and he created a hill to hide the road and the power lines. And then he planted these trees,” Weber said. “Isn’t that the most amazing thing you have ever heard? He created a hill because he didn’t want to see the road.”

For unique touches in a garden, Weber showed a few different examples from around the world. In one, a garden had a door leading nowhere propped against a brick wall, forming a focal point for the area. In another, ribbons hung from trees during their dormant season, bringing color and movement to the otherwise bare area.

Mary Jo Dreher, program chairman for Belle Fleur Garden Club, said she was glad to invite Weber to present to the three clubs, since she is the older sister of club member Pamela Lawler and a talented landscape designer.

“As I got to checking in on what Marcia did, I was amazed at her lovely website and the things she was doing,” Dreher said. “Her creativity was amazing.”

The head hostesses of Tuesday’s meeting were Melinda Pilkinton, Sharon Hardy and June Boyd. Master Gardeners and Galaxy Garden Club members were also invited.

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