Bennett Baxley’s eloquence drives me crazy. His amazing garden, full of plant treasures and simple, elegant gardening techniques and bulbs, I can then capture, write about, photograph and share. On this early October morning, abelia is blooming, it’s been sheared into a charming knee high hedge. A few sporadic roses, sprawling on a fence are intensely, intensely colored by the chilly air.

Pots of widow tears, achimenes, overflow with purple, pink and white droopy flowers – the terracotta pots on old boards, laid across upturned terra cotta pots, stacked. Sort of like a college dorm bookshelf of block and board. This clustering of plants and pots against horizontal, weathered old cypress shed should be a lesson for interior designers – velvety purple flowers, dull but sleek terra cotta and a warm, grained wall.

Planting Achimene Bulbs

The lesson for the perennial border: use achimenes in pots, hanging baskets, and with dry loving small perennials. Buy them in the spring, then dry from bulb companies and you may get to love them as many decades as Bennett has loved his. (He talks about hold old they are in the video link below)

So I think I can capture the garden. Ive been writing out Bennett and his little country homestead for a book. I can capture the history, in part, how the split rail fence fell in place, ebony ivy grew over and left sleek, almost mod zig zagged borders cutting through apple green centipede.

But his 75 years of practice telling a good story, I just cant convey. The gentle guidance, his screen porch has been refuge, retreat and launching point for a legion of young artist, writers, dreamers like me, the wanderlust and solid roots I just can’t capture.