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Mississippi: New life for Eudora Welty's garden

Walk through Eudora Welty's garden and you get a glimpse of her world.

The renowned Southern writer mentioned her garden about 150 times in her works, including this reference to her beloved camellias in her 1972 novel "The Optimist's Daughter," which won the Pulitzer Prize:

"Laurel's eyes travelled among the urns that marked the graves of the McKelvas and saw the favorite camellia of her father's, the old-fashioned Chandlerii Elegans, that he had planted on her mother's grave -- now big as a pony, saddled with unplucked bloom living and dead, standing on a facing carpet of its own flowers."

Welty died in 2001 at age 92, but more than 40 camellia shrubs still thrive in her garden today. Among them is a Pink Empress camellia that sits below the second-floor window where Welty wrote every morning.

Welty's garden was opened to the public in April after undergoing a recreation to capture its splendor between 1925 and 1945, when Welty's craft began to blossom. Her house is scheduled to open to the public in 2005. In conjunction with the garden, the site will serve as a museum interpreting Welty's life and work, which includes five novels, four short-story collections, two collections of her photographs and "One Writer's Beginnings," her best-selling 1984 memoir.

"It's kind of funny because scholars studied her work trying to figure out what she drew from, and it came from the garden," said Susan Haltom, the garden restoration consultant, who began working on the project in 1994 after Welty expressed concerns about its deterioration.

"Miss Welty saw the garden as a living thing and didn't want it to die," said Lee Threadgill, a restoration volunteer.

'A living picture'

Welty's mother, Chestina, laid out the garden in 1925 while the family's Tudor-style home was being constructed in Jackson's historic Belhaven district. She and Welty worked in the garden together until Chestina's death in 1966. Welty continued to devote time to the garden until she became too frail.

"She always called it her mother's garden," said Mary Alice White, Welty's niece. "Her mother designed the garden where there would always be a succession of bloom."

The garden stretches out over about three-quarters of an acre, and in the spring, it is filled with a colorful array of native azaleas, roses, poppies, perennials, larkspur, daylilies, sweet peas, hollyhocks and more. The perennial border contains daffodils, or as Welty called them, "Presbyterian sisters -- they hang together."

Throughout, there are benches, trellises and arbors, which were rebuilt and placed in their original locations. Many family photos were taken on the benches.

The garden is divided into sections: the front yard, the camellia garden, the upper garden, the lower garden, and the woodland garden. There are 30-plus varieties of camellias.

The cutting garden, behind the garage, includes fall and summer blossoms. Cut flowers were frequently displayed and shared in the Welty house and in her stories.

Haltom said when Welty lived in New York, her mother would cut camellia blooms and send them to her on the overnight train.

"Eudora did the same thing for her agent in New York when she moved back home," she said.

Welty recalled her mother once saying the garden shouldn't be a show garden, but "a learning experience, a living picture, always changing."
Garden diaries

A giant water oak tree towers in the front of the house. White said it was a sapling when Welty's father chose the lot to build on, and Chestina vowed it would never be cut down.

The accuracy of the restoration project was made possible by the extensive documentation of the garden by Welty and her mother. Chestina kept detailed garden diaries noting the layout of beds and bloom schedules, while Eudora -- an accomplished photographer -- took pictures, some of which were snapped from the roof of the family's house.

In one photograph, Chestina is tying sweet peas to a trellis. Written on the photo are the words, "the first spring in the garden, 1926." Another photo from the 1940s shows Eudora sitting on the steps working in the rock garden.

Haltom worked with Welty on the project for seven years before the author died, and did research for another two years before beginning the restoration. She also worked with nurseries specializing in historic plants to ensure accuracy.

"It's amazing what survived after all these years," Threadgill said.

Haltom said Welty once told her: "We used to get down on our hands and knees. The absolute contact between the hand and the earth, the intimacy of it, that is the instinct of a gardener."

Threadgill, one of many volunteers who helped prepare the garden for its opening, said even though she never met Welty, she loved her.

"I did my first term paper on her in the sixth grade. She's my childhood hero, so pulling weeds from her garden is fun for me," she said, kneeling in a flower garden. She added that she read Welty's "Delta Wedding" when she was pregnant. Her daughter Sarah's middle name is Dabney, after the heroine, Dabney Fairchild.

"I know Eudora is looking down from heaven smiling," Donna Dye, a member of the Welty Foundation said. "She loved every inch of this garden."

IF YOU GO ...

EUDORA WELTY'S GARDEN: 1119 Pinehurst St., Jackson, Mississippi. The garden is open for tours every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. but reservations are required. Admission is free. Call (601) 353-7762.

Posted by thinkum at May 11, 2004 04:46 PM