Our early spring has gardeners in a feeding frenzy. Go to any garden center and see for yourself. Friday, at a local nursery, I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “Will Garden for Food.”
Love for growing things cuts across demographic lines. Drive around town and look. You’ll see prim and proper azaleas, knock-out roses and pansies in perfectly groomed yards. In others, tangled masses of cannas crowd porches covered with pots of mother-in-law’s tongue and hen and chicks.
Increasingly city gardeners are cultivating the foot-or-so wide swath of dirt between the sidewalk and the street, known as the hell strip. With lack of water, heat from the pavement, foot traffic and dog litter, it’s a hellish place for a plant to eke out an existence, thus the name.
Southside gardeners have made hell-strip gardens an art form. Drive Third Avenue South and see for yourself.
At 906 Third Ave. S., you’ll see Jim DelPrince’s always immaculate yard. Prince teaches floral design at Mississippi State University. His yard is a testament to his expertise. Along with red-stemmed Swiss chard, Jim has blanket flower, roses and Stella d’Oro day lilies.
The other day I noticed what looked to be a plastic bag containing pass-along plants hanging on Joyce Hunt’s mailbox. By now they are probably in her front yard at 310 Third Ave. S., along with pinks, coneflower and day lilies. If you didn’t know better you’d think you were standing in front of a cottage in England.
Saturday afternoon Holly Krogh was busy cultivating the hell strip in front of her house, formerly the home of Loventrice Edwards. “I think Felder (Rushing) calls it ‘no-man’s strip,'” Holly said.
“Most of these flowers came from Loventrice’s yard,” she said as she sprinkled pine mulch over a rectangle of wildflower sprouts enclosed by a border of sticks resembling a stockade. Holly allowed the wildflowers came from a dollar packet of seeds she bought at Fred’s. It will be interesting to watch their progress.
Go left on Second Street headed south, and you soon come to Helen Hardy’s profusion of old roses, iris, clematis, day lilies and jasmine. Helen’s yard is a wonder.
Another block or so south of the Hardys’ you’ll find Gina McShan’s always elegant and tasteful array at 504 Second St. S. In addition to the flowers out front, the McShans have on Fifth Avenue beside them, one of the biggest oak leaf hydrangeas you’ve ever seen.
Wander around the Riverhill neighborhood to see more hell-strip gardens.
Over on Northside, Renzie Robinson’s house offers a very different, though no less interesting look. Her porch at 215 17th St. N., is lined with seven or eight pots of mother-in-law’s tongue and a plant she calls praying hands.
“Those praying hands mean you will always be prayed for,” Renzie said. “I don’t worry about burglars or thieves.”
It must work; Robinson keeps a TV, stereo system and a set of barbells on her front porch. The Macon native says she learned about plants from her mother, an avid, make-do gardener, who would buy one plant and divide it.
“She taught me how to talk to my flowers,” Robinson said.
“It makes you a better person loving those flowers,” she continued. “You cannot be mean and evil when you are around flowers.”
Robinson says she talks and touches her plants every day.
“Plants are just like babies,” she says. “They give you a sense of peace.”
For Catherine Andrews, who lives around the corner from Robinson at 1705 Short Third Ave. N., flowers evoke memories of loved ones. In fact, Andrews, a great-grandmother, refers to her flowers by the names of the people who gave them to her.
An old knock-out rose by her front steps is “Dorothy and Warren Brooks,” named for her son and daughter-in-law; Andrews calls another rose, “Mary Lee Brooks,” for the daughter who gave it to her. In Andrews’ world, cannas have namesakes as does a string of fledgling marigolds and petunias.
“Those are ‘Eddie Martin,’ named after my grandson,” she says.
Sitting on her front porch late Saturday afternoon with her husband of more than 30 years, Sammi McCoy, Andrews pointed to flowers that belonged to her mother and reminisced about her horticultural beginnings.
She says she learned as a child to love flowers from her grandmother who grew up on the Eugene Hardy place in the Prairie and who, despite working long days in the fields during growing season, found time to inject beauty into the life of her family through flowers.
“My grandmother grew those big old yellow sunflowers, four o’clocks and zinnias,” she said pausing to revisit the memory.
“We just love flowers,” said Andrews. “They make the house look good.”
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. E-mail him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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