By Keysha Drexel
Journal editor
Cathy Adams was something of a late-bloomer to the gardening scene, but now that the former journalist, published author and history buff has developed her green thumb, she is determined to plant a legacy for her family and her community through her work at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and at her home in English Village.
When Cathy and her husband, Tom, moved into their Aberdeen Road home in 1997, she said the couple knew nothing about gardening or how to manage the out-of-control garden at their historic home.
Cathy is a board member at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and was named the 2012 Birmingham Botanical Gardens Volunteer of the Year, but the former Southern Living editorial staff member said she didn?t know a thing about gardening when she became the owner of the overgrown Aberdeen Road garden.
Cathy said she and her husband were overwhelmed at the thought of trying to bring the garden back to its former glory, which boasted a formal design and was featured in a national magazine in the 1920s.
Cathy learned about the history of the garden from 91-year-old T.D. Johnson, who grew up in the house.
?She?s become a really great friend of mine and tells me these wonderful stories about what the garden used to be like. She?ll point out a flower and tell me that they were planted by her grandmother, and you feel this amazing connection to the history,? she said.
T.D.?s family lived in the house and enjoyed the garden for 65 years, Cathy said.
?She gave me a photo album of the garden from the 1920s. It was so beautiful, very formal, with gorgeous roses,? Cathy said. ?T.D. told me they had two live-in gardeners to keep it up, and I knew there was no way that I could do all of that by myself.?
Until they moved, Cathy said the only gardening experience she and her husband had was scheduling lawn maintenance for what she called their ?classic 1950s yard with azaleas and boxwoods.?
?We had a lawn service to maintain the old yard and had no idea what to do with this place when we first moved in,? she said. ?Nature had taken over the garden. There were vines and kudzu, and it was literally like hacking your way through a jungle to get through the yard.?
But Cathy and Tom were not deterred and tried, as many novice gardeners do, to tackle the overgrown garden themselves.
?I remember very early on telling this lady I had hired to help me with the jungle that I wanted a red tree, and she couldn?t believe I didn?t know the red tree was a maple. That?s just how much I didn?t know,? Cathy said.
It was autumn when the couple moved in, but Tom wanted to take a stab at maintaining his new garden, Cathy said.
?He dug up all these weeds, and then he wanted to go to a garden shop and get some plants. Well, when he got to the garden shop and starting looking around, he saw a bunch of those ?weeds? that he had been pulling up from the garden. Turns out they were Lenten roses that went for $7.99 apiece. We didn?t know a rose from a weed back then,? she said.
So the University of Mississippi Department of Journalism?s Most Outstanding Graduate of 1972 set out to educate herself on everything she could find out about growing plants and flowers in Alabama.
She looked around for gardening classes and found herself at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens?a place she thought was way out of her league as a budding gardener.
?Back then, I had the misconception that a lot of people still have?that the Birmingham Botanical Gardens are for people who know everything about gardening. But the Gardens are for everyone, whether you?re just starting out or have been gardening for years. And that?s my favorite part about it?not only is it a beautiful place, but its mission is to educate,? she said.
That?s exactly what happened with Cathy. She took some classes at the Gardens and met other gardeners of all skill levels.
?One of the things I love most about being at the Gardens is having young couples come in who have just bought a house and want a garden and don?t have a lot of money to make a lot of mistakes. That?s where they can benefit from all the mistakes that the older people like me have made,? she said.
Her education at the Gardens, Cathy said, taught her that if she wanted to preserve her garden?s glorious history and not work herself to death, she was going to need help?professional help.
So about 10 years ago, Cathy teamed up with Jason Powell of Petals from the Past in Jemison.
Jason specializes in vintage plants and old Southern plants, Cathy said, just the kinds of things she wanted to include in her garden?s historical renovation.
?Jason has helped me design a garden with plants that would have been here in the 1920s but with easier upkeep that I can handle,? Cathy said.
The design is what Cathy calls a English cottage garden. The garden is laid out like a series of small areas with stepping stones leading up paths that meander through the property.
?It?s kind of chaotic and all over the map. It?s not formal at all. It has lots and lots of roses, and everything in the garden kind of works around the roses,? she said.
But the roses in Cathy?s yard are not like hybrid tea roses or other varieties that require a lot of babying and are high-maintenance, Cathy said.
?These are what I call the no-brainer kind. The hybrid tea roses are a full-time job. Jason found roses growing by the side of the road, in cemeteries and in other places where they thrived all by themselves. He took cuttings of those and planted them here,? she said.
The garden features several varieties of perennials suited to the specific conditions of English Village, Cathy said.
?All of the dirt that is up here was brought from somewhere else. If you look at old pictures when this area was first being developed, there was basically no topsoil up here, it was just rock,? she said. ?They brought in good dirt, and it doesn?t have the red clay that you have to deal with in most gardens in the Birmingham area,? she said. ?On the other hand, you get kind of a micro-climate up here so things that will come back for other people won?t come back here.?
Cathy?s property includes two vacant lots across the street that offer stunning views overlooking Birmingham. She knew she wanted to extend her garden area there, and a trip to Maine provided just the inspiration she needed to transform the lots.
?I was on vacation in Maine and saw a border garden with a fence, and it was just beautiful, so I emailed Jason a picture of it as an idea for those two lots,? she said. ?He emailed me back and said, ?You don?t live in Maine.??
But while the area doesn?t get the freezing temperatures of Maine, it can experience some pretty strong winds, Cathy said.
?I get a lot of very cold winter wind sweeping across the mountain, so Jason designed a border garden with prairie plants with things that you?d see in Texas and Kansas or other places that get harsh wind,? she said.
The 120-foot border garden frames the sweeping view of the Magic City with salvia, daisies and coneflowers and is centered around an arbor covered with antique roses.
Cathy said the border garden is one of her favorite parts of her property.
?It?s probably the most rewarding part because it?s on the street where a lot of people walk by, so I get to make a lot of people happy with that border garden,? she said.
Cathy?s favorite spot in her backyard garden is a relatively new addition to the space?s design, she said.
In 2011, Cathy and Tom were on a trip to Italy, and their daughter was watching the house and the couple?s beloved golden retrievers, Eudora and Sunshine.
A tropical storm blew up bad weather in the Birmingham metro area, and Cathy and Tom received a somewhat ominous text message from their daughter.
?She just sent a text that said ?The damage isn?t that bad? and so we immediately called her and found out the 100-year-old sweet gum tree had been struck by lightning and fallen right in the middle of the backyard ,? she said.
?Jason said that Tom was always complaining that the garden was too busy, had too much going on, so we put a bench and fountain out here and created a tranquil little spot for Tom,? she said. ?But I don?t think he?s sat on that bench once. He?s convinced Jason engineered that tree coming down so we would have another place to plant more stuff.?
But the garden bench in the tranquility garden is put to good use, Cathy said.
?When I was 8 years old, a friend of mine had a pool put in at her house, and it was the first private pool any of us had ever seen. Well, my friends are all jealous because our friend has a pool, but what I was jealous of was her fountain. It took me 53 years, but I got my own fountain. It?s a little boy with a frog, and the frog?s spitting water at him. I sit out here on the bench with the dogs and look at my fountain. It?s a really quiet spot that I love,? she said.
In addition to the pocket garden and its fountain, Cathy said her other favorite parts of the garden are the maple trees she planted in 2011 with her twin granddaughters.
Cathy said she got the idea for planting the trees after learning more about the property?s history from T.D.
?We have a water oak in the front yard, and it?s probably one of the biggest trees in the neighborhood, and T.D. told me that she can remember planting that tree with her grandmother. She said that she can remember after they planted it her grandmother said, ?Someday maybe it will give somebody some shade,? and that was really powerful to me. I knew I wanted to give my granddaughters that same experience. Maybe when they?re 91 years old they?ll remember planting those maple trees with me,? she said.
The 5-year-old twins live in Denver, Colo., and call her often to ask about their trees, Cathy said.
?When they visit, I take a picture of them next to their trees?one?s in the front yard and one?s in the backyard?and that way I can document how they grow along with the trees,? she said.
Cathy said she hopes the experience plants a seed within her grandchildren that grows into a love of nature.
?With children today, it is so much about the internet or the video games or the TV and they don?t get out and connect with nature as much, and I think it?s important that they get outside and play and appreciate the simple pleasures of being outside,? she said.
Gardening has deepened her own appreciation for nature, Cathy said.
?There?s really a spiritual aspect to gardening. Plants are coming back up and trees are growing towards the sky, and it?s like watching tiny miracles every day,? she said.
As a board member and volunteer at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Cathy said she tries to take that message of nature?s everyday miracles to as many people as she can.
?You hear young people say they can?t garden because they don?t have the time. That?s when I tell them that you can design a whole garden around the idea of being low-maintenance. Then they tell me they can?t garden because they have small children. That?s when I tell them to give the kids a shovel and let them get in there with you and get dirty and learn what it?s all about,? she said.
Cathy also has an answer for folks who say they can?t garden because of their pets.
?You just have to train the dogs to behave in the garden. Now, mine are so protective of it I call them the garden guards,? she said.
?The point is, you can always come up with a reason you can?t do it, but if you really want to garden, it?s a simple pleasure and it doesn?t have to be an expensive pleasure.?
And you don?t have to have a historic garden on top of Red Mountain to develop a green thumb and to reap the rewards of gardening, Cathy said.
?My daughter lives in an apartment in New York City, and she has window boxes. It?s not about how much garden you have, it?s about the experience of having the garden,? she said.
In addition to her work at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Cathy is also involved in the restoration of the historic Redmont Park garden.
But her love of history and passion for preserving it doesn?t stop at the garden gates.
Cathy?s 2002 book ?Worthy of Remembrance: A History of Redmont? won the Jefferson County Historical Society?s Thomas Jefferson Award in 2003. Her latest novel, ?Truth Be Told,? combines history, mystery and conflict. Her debut novel, ?Other Autumns,? was?named the 1997 Fiction Book of the Year by the Mississippi Library Association.
Cathy?s latest mission is to restore the historic Lyric Theatre in downtown Birmingham. She and fellow members of the ?Light up the Lyric? campaign committee are seeking to raise $7 million to restore the theater and reopen it for concerts, plays, weddings and other events.
?I?m very interested in saving history, whether that?s a garden or a great old place like the Lyric. I think those things are important for future generations,? she said.
Source: http://www.otmj.com/2013/04/rooted-in-history/
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