Nanny’s Garden
I offer three primary gardening services – southern garden restoration, ongoing bed maintenance, and planning/planting new beds. I do a lot of pruning. I use manual tools and for the most part do not use herbicides and pesticides. I do not do landscape contracting nor do I do lawns (with one exception mentioned below).
I learned gardening as a kid from my grandmother “Nanny,” Mary Gillespie, who had an amazing place on McGregor Drive (as seen above in 1955) and who also ran the Norge Village on North Trenholm Road that many people still remember. I did lawn maintenance for years as a high school and college student. Over summers in the 80′s when I was teaching high school at Brookland Cayce I had a niche ”jungle taming” business which was very successful. Majoring in Biology with an emphasis in Botany didn’t hurt.
For the most part what I do is help homeowners uncover and restore the beauty of their southern gardens or natural landscapes overrun and overgrown after years of usually benign neglect. In addition to the general hard work of getting rid of smothering Wisteria, Smilax, Honeysuckle, Ivy and other vines, and digging out Ligustrum and Cherry Laurel and other bothersome volunteers, I also do a lot of careful pruning of treasured shrubs, as well as replanting when needed. These tasks thankfully take some skill – which makes me smile when I think of following my grandmother Nanny around in her yard and learning to prune, graft, root and otherwise care for plants in a traditional southern garden. Who would have thought it would come in so handy?
Sometimes I do basic labor intensive tasks like old fashioned weeding, spreading mulch, turning ground, and planting annuals. I also do ongoing follow up maintenance – bed maintenance – since stuff just keeps growing and trying to come back.
I work with a gifted local landscape designer to plan new garden areas or for filling in gaps caused by clearing out old beds.
I use only manual tools. One of the great benefits of gardening is the peace and quiet. I like fresh air. I mowed enough lawns and breathed enough exhaust back in the day to last me a lifetime. I would be quite happy to do lawn work with a manual reel mower and edger and rake! Since I take down lots of small trees you might think I need a chain saw, but I have gotten really fast with my hand saw, and it’s nice not having to deal with a finicky small engine. Who wants to start and restart a chain saw a hundred times over the course of a day? Not me.
I don’t use chemicals either, except for the occasional concentrated Round Up on a stump. I prefer digging stumps out though if possible. With a shovel, an ax and a mattock – and a little sweat – I can take out most stumps pretty quickly. And they don’t grow back.
Most damaged camellias and azaleas take a few seasons to get back into shape, but it is amazing the good that a little sun and fresh air will do them. Camellias particularly seem to weather the burden of being covered up for a long time.
A friend sent me a saying that I like, from Horace…”You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps coming back.” Yep…
