Welcome to my Southern Garden Site.

This Garden Site is dedicated to both of my grandmothers, who were avid gardeners and who were as different from each other as night from day. Each instilled in me a love of gardening and an appreciation of the beauty of flowers. Maternal Grandmother: Melrose Randal Tate Fraternal Grandmother: Agnes Alice Abbott Saxon R.I.P.

Prologue Grandmother Tate, ever the Southern lady, had a cottage garden surrounding her modest house. Each morning she would walk around the house, looking at all of the flowers to see what was blooming. I remember going with her when I went to her house. She lived far away, so I saw her only several times a year. Pansies were her favorite, but she also grew sweep peas. I love both of those flowers to this day. To this day, I love to walk around the yard, checking on my gardens. Grandmother Saxon was a quaint little person from way out in the country, but she was married to my granddaddy, who became a general in the army and later the mayor of our town. She was a unitue little person about 5' tall, and a person with old-fashioned remedies. She wore a big straw sun hat and several layers of clothing when she worked in her garden (even in the summertime) in to protect her from the heat. Her house was a large one on a very large lot (in fact, they owned the entire block in our small, southern town). She could put a stick in the ground and it would grow! Most days she was either working in her vegetable garden, or in one of her flower gardens. She had flowers gardens all over her large lawn, and if anyone ever had a green thumb, she did. I got my love of rocks from her. She hauled rocks from Texas when they moved back home after granddaddy's tour of duty as commander of a German prisoner of war camp there. He was good to the prisoners, and they liked him. He put them to work to save the rice crops of the family that owned Uncle Ben's. They were so grateful to him that each year for the rest of their lives, my grandparents got a carton of Uncle Ben's rice from the family. I have some of Grandmother Saxon's flowers in my yard to this day, many years after she died. I have some of the sedum in one of the three concrete flower urns that she gave me. The sedum used to cover the sides of her steps on her front porch. (My daugher has made me promise that I will leave those flower urns to her - they are very old looking now.) I have what she called her "outhouse lilies". They are very pretty lilies that bloom on a cluster from tall stalks that shoot up suddenly. I once asked her their names, and she said, "outhouse lilies". Then I asked, why are they named that? She said, "Well, I always called them that because they grew out by the outhouse" Anyway, it was from my two grandmothers that I got my love for gardening. When I was in school, I joined the 4-H Club and one of my projects was gardening. I planted all sorts of flowers in my parent's yard, , many of which I got from Grandmother Saxon's yard. When the weather is nice, there is nothing that will life my spirits more than planting flowers, tending my garden, watering, and just simply walking through the yard like I used to as a little girl with my grandmothers. I don't pretend to be a gardening expert. I sometimes struggle to get things to grow. My shrubs and flowers sometimes die due to excess heat, not enough moisture, planting the wrong plants in the wrong places, planting things that aren't suitable to this growing area, or from many of a miriad of reasons. But when I find success, I feel great. To me, gardening is synomymous with a love of nature; for to me, creating something beautiful is a worthwhile accomplishment. My yard has been designated as a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. Mostly it is because I live close to a wooded area, but also because I've kept a lot of native trees and shrubs that were here when we bought our land and house, and also because I've planted more..     This site is going to be a display for the photographs of the flowers in my garden, and a diary of the progress of the gardens. I'll discuss some of my successes and failures, and show what I've accomplished. Food for Thought: Have you ever noticed that things in your life go in cycles -- that at one point in your life you would do one thing, then move on to another? There was a time in my life when I put gardening on hiatus. I live on the Mississippi Gulf Coast near Back Bay where the soil is mostly sand. I also live in a very shady area next to the woods. There are many trees on our property and way too much shade. When we first moved here twenty-eight years ago, I tried to bring my gardening skills from Colorado. There, we had some beautiful flowers when we lived in the Midwest, and after making the clay soil there more fertile with peat from the mountains (our aunt and uncle's peat bog) and cow manure, almost anything would grow. In fact, we had some wonderful fruit, vegetables and flowers there that won't grow in this soil here. Here, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I have some unique problems. At first, seeds wouldn't germinate (and a lot still don't). I don't know why - they either do not germinate at all or would wither when about an inch tall). Many flowers I love wouldn't grow in the shady areas, and when I watered, the water just drained on through the soil and down the hill to the creek. Fertilizer seeped down too fast and didn't do it's job properly. The ground wouldn't stay moist. I finally gave up and just planted native shrubs, azaleas, and caladiums. Roses went bad after a few years... they got tall and "leggy" and the blooms were small. I didn't have many flowering flowers except the camellia and azaleas.   Camellia Azaleas   Finally I just concentrated on getting grass to grow, but that's been a battle, too. In the over twenty-eight years that I've lived here, the trees grew and spread, making even more shade. Lots of the grass began to disappear on the shady parts of the lawn, and moss grew in its place. I had only one area where the sunshine provided enough light for flowers, and I didn't want to ruin the only good grassy portion of the lawn to plant flowers. Some years we had good grass, other years we had fairy rings, cricket moles, or dry spells, so the grass didn't look great either.   My yard was a mess! A few years ago, I decided to change my strategy. Use the sunny location for flowers that need lots of sunshine and light; plant shade plants in areas where the grass stopped growing. That way I would have to water to keep the plants alive. And guess what? The grass is slowly coming back. Thanks to Hurricane Georges in the fall of 1998, we lost some trees and large limbs which let more light into places that previously didn't have enough light to grow flowers. Lesson 1: Give in to the shade and plant shady plants. I saw a glimmer of hope for flowers that wouldn't previously grow. The biggest thing I learned over the years is that in this area everything needs to be fertilized much more often than other places, because it just leaches down thought the sand. When I started fertilizing my flower beds with 8-8-8 granules at least once a month, the flowers started to live, and grow, and bloom. Even a tiny Sesanqua that my aunt gave us as a housewarming gift when we first moved in that had barely kept leaves on it and stayed only a few inches tall started growing last year and now looks great. Lesson 2: Fertilize often in sandy soil. The summer after the storm, we removed three oak trees (which gave us a stack of firewood that would last for years, thanks to Vern, my hubby who chopped and split for months). This has let grass start growing on the front lawn and in the back, but also has made me move lots of shade plants so they would survive. Lesson 3: Improve the sandy soil with mulch and peat and manure. To help improve the soil, I started a real compost pile in addition to the piles of leaves I made each year that always provided some leaf mold to help hold moisture in the soil. Every time I dig a hole now to plant something, I just remove the sandy soil and replace it with either potting soil, peat and manure, or topsoil that I buy. I've spent a fortune on plants and various types of soil enhancers, but it is paying off. The sandy soil I remove is being used to fill in washed-out places and areas of the yard where topsoil has been eroded and roots are exposed. Lesson 4: When plants don't work, don't hesitate to dig them up and either transplant them, give them away or throw them away. At the moment, I have a few established flower gardens, some a few years old, and some fairly new ones. The newer ones will hopefully grow and look better each year. This site will be a running commentary of the progress (aren't I hopeful???) of my Southern Garden. Keep in mind, it's just the beginning. I'm basically trying to put in perennials and shrubs that will last year after year.     To go to my main garden site to see links to all of my garden pages, click on Next. Some of my tours are arranged by Seasons, and some are arranged by my types of gardens.

  

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The Evolution of a Magnolia Blossom	Essence of Magnolias Links and Awards	Garden of Peace and Serenity
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Spanish Moss Site	His Plan For Your Life	Great Blue Heron
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Mardi Gras	The Beginning Experience	My Southern Garden
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Magnolia Images	Southern Creations Photography	Christmas Note Cards

 

All sounds and graphics not credited to others (or created by me) are considered to be in "public domain". If you see something that is not in public domain that you created, please let me know and I will either give you credit or remove it. Every effort has been made to credit when information was available. Thanks. All garden photos copyright 1999 - 2001 by Linda Saxon Nix. Title graphic is mine. Photos may not be used without permission.

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