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Memories of a Garden and its Master Gardeners

Will Redfern '18 • Apr 03, 2020

As most of us over the age of 40 realize, memory is a tricky thing.

Sometimes we forget entirely, sometimes we forget just little bits here and there, or sometimes our memory is subconsciously altered or enhanced. Probably everyone knows the tale of a policeman who the day after a bank robbery interviewed five witnesses and received five completely different descriptions of the robber. In my case, however, I am living in a memory that is beautiful, vibrant, colorful and ever-changing. To paraphrase today’s vernacular, I am living the dream.
I grew up next to my grandmother, the original master gardener of our family who created the most wonderful garden playground a child could have. A small sampling of the delights includes daffodils, candytuft, azaleas and dogwoods in the spring, an over-story of massive pine trees and other tall trees such as magnolia, oak, and mulberry, day lilies and hydrangeas in the summer, a beautiful array of fall color, then red and white and peppermint camellias in the winter, all framed by gorgeous boxwoods. There was color for every season. In addition, there was of course a vegetable garden, a space large enough for kids to play games on, a large magnolia tree that served as the neighborhood tree fort, and a zillion places for hide-and-go-seek. A wonderful new plant could be found around each bend of the many pathways that seemed to crisscross the Yard, as we called it. 

My grandmother, who had been working the Yard for decades before I was around, was not a master gardener certified by a land grant school, but rather someone who literally was a master of gardening. To this day, I don’t know from where she learned it all. She loved working in the Yard, and she did it practically every day of her life, her tiny ninety-pound frame invariably topped by a massively wide hat that seemed destined to swallow her up whole but somehow never did. Amazingly, she gardened in a very natural and sustainable way, years before it became popular, by using plants that suited the space, never throwing anything away, and shying away from formality. More amazingly, she was legally blind the last 25 years of her life, but still knew where every plant was and what every plant was. She was also very generous with her plants; throughout my adult life, I have met people who tell me they have a plant from the Yard (including our own Gayle Donovan, thank you!). When I was little, every year in December she cut and made large piles of green branches splashed with red for friends to come pick up and take home for holiday decoration. Without realizing it, I learned – fleetingly - many of the basic things one does in a garden. Naturally, I was completely spoiled by having such a wonderland at my disposal. 
My grandmother trained the next generation of family master gardeners for the Yard. First was my aunt, who helped and then took over when my grandmother died and continued to maintain it for many years, also continuing with my grandmother’s principles. After retiring from her job, my aunt could also typically be found working in the Yard, improving on spots here and there with her little dog(s) in the wheelbarrow keeping her company. She especially loved the veggie garden. Then there was my mother, who learned so much she was able to develop her own wildflower shade garden in a section of the Yard. Mom also became a Norfolk Master Gardener – Class of 1988 and now an Emerita member. The last of this second generation trained by my grandmother is my sister, who became so enamored of horticulture and plant life that she completed a master’s degree in landscape architecture. She does magnificent flower arrangements, better than anyone I have seen. She has worked in the Yard for most of her life and has encyclopedic knowledge of plants generally and more specifically every plant in the Yard, knowledge that I depend on to my detriment. She is perhaps the embodiment of my grandmother’s gardening philosophy, combining it with modern science. 

Now I live in my grandmother’s house and am the third generation (both biologically and educationally) of family gardeners to work in the Yard, alongside my sister. I unknowingly learned from my grandmother first, then aunt, mother and sister, and I also have formal training as a Norfolk Master Gardener, but I am far inferior to them as a gardener. I have been working in the Yard for five years now, and every season it reveals something new and exciting to me as my horticultural universe expands. ‘I didn’t know that was there,’ I say to my sister, who as the fountain of Yard knowledge reminds me that ‘Gram put that there.’ Working in the Yard is interesting and enjoyable for me, and makes me think of the family gardeners who worked there before me, especially my grandmother. ‘Why did they put this plant in that place,’ I wonder, ‘if I put this plant here would they like it? …. Better not prune that boxwood too much!’ Working in the Yard also brings back powerful memories of childhood and growing up. Sometimes I look out the window and see – or imagine? - my grandmother kneeling by the flower bed working on her candytufts, or my aunt working in the veggie garden, or my mother in the wildflower garden, or my sister trimming the azaleas. My memory of the Yard and its master gardeners comes to life, the past and the present mixing joyfully and comfortably.  I am reminded of the Louis Armstrong classic:

“I see trees of green,
red roses too,
I see them bloom,
for me and you,
and I think to myself,
what a wonderful world.”


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