Nanny's Garden

My grandmother and grandfather, whom we all called Nanny and Pop, moved to Columbia SC in 1943 from Tampa. They bought a house a block off Trenholm Road near Trenholm and Beltline (for those who know Columbia), a small house by today's standards, but with a deep back yard that sloped down to a creek bed. For some reason this suburban bottomland grew the largest Loblolly Pine Trees I have ever seen outside of Congaree Swamp National Park. I loved just lying on her grass and staring up into those huge pine trees. Along with the pines were the natural under story Dogwoods and a few hardwoods here and there, including one giant Water Oak down by the creek. It was a perfect natural setting for their gardening plans.

Nanny and Pop along with their two neighbors got busy developing what would in time be one of the premier stops on the Columbia garden tour. The three yards were planned and planted as a unit. The primary focus would in time be Azaleas, Camellias, Dogwoods, Hydrangeas, Tea Olives, and various Lilies. Of course there were another dozen types of horticultural favorites here and there as well. I always loved the Elaeagnus hedge in her front yard. My keenest memory may be the smell of her gigantic Tea Olives. Oh how I love that smell. I have tried to grow them here, but they just don't emit the pungent aroma like in her yard.

Well, this was a garden twenty plus years in the making. By the time I was old enough to help out in was more of a matter of maintenance. Just keeping the English Ivy and Pachysandra at bay, digging up the brick walks and taking out the roots and resetting the bricks, and cleaning the pine straw off her very high roof kept me pretty busy. I loved her Charleston grass. For years I cut it with a manual mower!

My grandfather Pop died when I was eight, so I just sort of came to think of it as Nanny's yard. From Nanny I learned how to graft Camellias, prune and root Azaleas, cross fertilize Lilies, play with the color of Hydrangeas, and generally love the soil. I also learned to love white painted brick houses with Charleston-Green shutters from Nanny. Know any for sale?

A couple of weeks ago I found a little box of slides full of pictures taken of Nanny's yard in the mid 1950's, before I was born. What a treasure! As a garden it is not yet mature, but it is still beautiful. I scanned them with my new Epson scanner and posted them on my Flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelgillespie/ - they are in the "Nanny’s Garden" set right at the top. I have several copies of postcards the city of Columbia made of the three yards to sell in local stores. I'll scan them in sometime along with other pictures from the garden and add them to the set. While you are at the Flickr site you can see lots of pictures of Nanny. She was a classy lady, a great grandmother, a good business woman, and a dear sweet friend to me. She died in 1985. Twenty one years later and I still miss her very much.