How the garden grows ... and grows

On one of the many evenings when Carey Pickard and Chris Howard hosted a fundraiser for one of Macon’s nonprofits, in the gardens behind their storybook cottage on Magnolia Street, it appeared the mulch under the podocarpus hedge enclosure had been decorated with carefully placed landing lights for a possible UFO visit.

Intrigued by the mystery, one of the guests mentioned it to Chris, who laughed about the tiny cherry tomatoes that had volunteered, from compost used to fertilize the shrubbery, and now glowed in the reflected landscape lighting. This is the ultimate in garden recycling, an initiative that never conjures lovely attributes, but is the practical result of discarded plant material.

Since the 2001 purchase of the circa 1854 brick building that once served as Peggy Popper’s Gift Shop and, a century before that, the headquarters of Macon’s water works, Carey and Chris have focused their energy on the grounds, specifically the back yard, which is the depth of the lot that rises up the hill to Washington Avenue.

Left in its natural state, it would have been a desolate former parking lot with little personality and no privacy. Since off street parking is at a premium in downtown residential areas, the first task, in 2003, was reserving a place for the cars at the end of the driveway, tucked into the yard, behind a hedge, completely out of view from the street.

A low stone wall encircles the partially excavated cistern, where finely crushed red brick can be raked to a smooth surface in what is now a place for alfresco dining. Defined by the walls of shrubbery, there is additional seating on low walls a few steps up from the area nearest the cottage garden. Through the handsome, closely trimmed wall of evergreens behind the house, a decorative bench is a distant focal point, placed under a canopy of shrubbery spilling over the Washington Avenue wall of the property.

AMBITIOUS PLANS FOR A VEGETABLE GARDEN

The bench is handy for taking a break from yard work or for admiring the formal vegetable garden, separated from a carpet of St. Augustine grass by a brick border and dressed with pine straw to keep the weeds at bay. Clearing out the back property for the working garden began in 2008, and by 2010, the mature garden was bordered by young citrus trees that have survived the unpredictable Middle Georgia climate and continue to produce fruit for winter enjoyment.

The rows of summer’s bounty are separated by paths wide enough to closely inspect the fennel, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, yellow squash, honeydew melons, requisite collards and cotton! The owners added cotton to their crop to add a touch of color, when the plants are flowering, and for their friends’ children to learn about one of the raw materials used to make their clothes.

When Carey and Chris married last year, their floral designer used the cotton in the arrangements for the rehearsal dinner. Before summer begins, a low hedge of bright green basil is planted, on the periphery of the other vegetables, as an abundant source for cooking and for drying to store the rest of the year. They are generous with their harvest, letting friends know when to get the freshest, urban grown, organic produce available, from the most picturesque vegetable garden in town.

A NEW GARDEN PROJECT EVERY YEAR

Early in the planning stages, the space under old magnolia trees and separated from the neighbor’s house by a wall was cleared of underbrush for a deck, hidden from the rest of the yard by low hedges and accessed with a walkway and steps built up the slight elevation and over an established, paved drainage for ground water from the back of the property. Like a child’s imagined secret room, the deck is a surprise at night, when torcheres are used to subtly light the way and to surround the seating area.

With few options for expanding the footprint of their house, Carey and Chris purchased the neighboring house to convert to a few apartments and rear guest quarters, which are accessed through the secret “room.” The property behind the second house is separate from the owners’ gardens, but has given them more landscaping projects.

“We don’t know what we’re talking about, but we wave our arms, trying to describe what we want and Cutting Edge Landscaping seems to understand, and interprets what we envision,” Carey says about the expansion of the gardens, with the help of the company they have used for several years.

It is hard to imagine what could possibly make the gardens more exquisite — aged sculptures are tucked into niches and graceful, white mandevilla wraps around trellises, especially effective at night when the blooms are luminous.

However, the owners’ fertile imaginations (pun intended), fueled by their travels to even grander places, come up with a new project each year. After visiting Sissinghurst Castle in Great Britain and touring the magnificent gardens, Carey and Chris brought some of the less ambitious ideas back to use in the passageway between their properties and the house that Chris’ parents, Paula and Arthur Howard, had bought next door. Fashioned as a parterre garden, more formal in design, this ordinary backyard is being transformed with a European sensitivity.

PRACTICAL EVERGREENS

In addition to podocarpus, cypress and Burford holly are ideal for the tall hedges necessary for year round privacy and to create interesting partitions between sections of the garden. Glossy leafed American and English boxwoods, which are well suited for low hedges or for topiaries, are used throughout the gardens as less intrusive borders. Though the maintenance of the gardens might deter some homeowners, the upkeep of evergreens requires routine trimming and shaping, but less time than that for deciduous shrubbery.

The gardens are an avocation for the owners, and a respite from the business world, which keeps Carey on the road as a consultant for nonprofit fundraising and Chris involved with the community as public affairs specialist for Cox Communications. Monitoring the progress of the latest addition to their gardens and picking vegetables at their peak keeps them in the backyard during Macon’s long spring and summer.

The owners entertain frequently in the garden, which has been the romantic setting for weddings, has been included in numerous public garden tours and has been featured, with the house, on a blog, “Past Present: Living with Heirlooms and Antiques,” written by Susan Sully, author of numerous books on Southern architecture including, “Coming Home: The Southern Vernacular House.”

Carey and Chris recently toured Colonial Williamsburg, where the gardens are as old as some of the houses, which were built in the late 17th century. Carey and Chris took notes for the next project in their little slice of mid-19th century America.

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "How the garden grows ... and grows."