Author: Laura Lee Rose

“She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey.” – Van Morrison   Driving up the back roads and highways of South Carolina we do see seasonal color. This past weekend was exemplary! There were fabulous yellows, pinks, purples, oranges and whites.

Fall is in the air and night temperatures are at a lovely low after the humidity of the past summers’ sticky caress. The roadsides and fields are blooming whites, yellows and lavenders as flowers are desperately trying to attract bees, flies, moths, and butterflies.

I’d like you to meet the Mallow family. They are a handsome bunch and will add daily interest and color to your perennial and shrub beds during the summer and fall.

I just got back from a week in the Appalachian Mountains where North Carolina borders Tennessee. It was so nice to go from mid-90 to mid-60 temperatures. We were also at an elevation that was literally in the clouds.

Found on the southeastern edge of the continent, Sea Island address, marsh viewI was lying in my hammock contemplating the forms and shapes in the leaf canopy overhead when I was shocked to discover that a tree growing by the corner of the screen porch was an imposter, at least not what I had unwittingly supposed was a hickory.

The daffodils are some of the first heralds of spring in my pass along garden. They are the alarm clock that let me know that the garden soil temperature is warming. The red maples and Carolina jessamine are also coloring the skyline and treetops.

This is my favorite season. Nippy nights and cool days get me pulling out favorite sweaters and socks, and looking at the sky, day and night. Weather fronts offer the most unusual clouds. I saw some today that looked like my father’s eyebrows, which resembled overgrown plumose antennae of moths.

American Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a native tree that has small orange fruit and roundish to elliptical dark green leaves.

We get real excited about plants and will tout the benefits of this or that one to our friends, but we also need to recognize that they are part of a larger group. We in the Lowcountry have many natural gardens to visit and enjoy, from the swamps and forests to the savannahs and sand dunes. Each “garden” has its rare, occasional, special and common forbs (great old English word for plant).

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are those who work the soil, and we could also have lots of the same answers in different orders of importance. Many of us garden for fruits, flowers, exercise, therapy, and perhaps an innate need to nurture. If you give me some dirt, compost, water, seeds, tubers, cuttings and bulbs, I can make a garden.