A couple of weeks ago, Gwen Henderson invited me to visit her Blythewood garden to see her enormous rambling rose. She and her husband, Willie, have been nurturing and expanding the garden of their home since they purchased it in 1996. Every day, she hand-waters numerous potted plants. Mr. Henderson keeps the grass tidy.
Mrs. Henderson grew up near Greelyville, a small town in Williamsburg County southeast of Blythewood. When she was a child, her neighbors, the Moores, lived in their homeplace and their son, Johnny, was a friend of Mrs. Henderson’s. “Miss Grace” Moore was Johnny’s mother, and she enjoyed working in her garden.
Mrs. Henderson visited Miss Grace’s flower garden, and she especially loved the roses. The house is gone now, but back in 2020 on a visit to Greelyville, Mrs. Henderson noticed one of the rambling roses from Mrs. Grace’s garden running across the grass. She stopped and dug up a piece of the rose, brought it home, put it in her garden where it thrived. Perhaps “Miss Grace” is looking down on Mrs. Henderson’s garden and wanted to help her expand it.
I acquired many of the flowers in my garden in the same way. I have a pink rose that I rooted from a clipping from my grandmother’s garden; she probably got it the same way from someone else. I have spiderwort in my garden that I brought back on a plane from the garden of my sister’s first home in Alabama in 2006.
The rambling rose in Mrs. Henderson’s garden is pampered with cow manure compost every year, and it has shown its appreciation by running across her fence and covering a crape myrtle tree. She now calls the tree her “rose tree.” Throughout her garden she has many roses and other flowers, and by recalling the origin of the plants she remembers the past. “Miss Grace’s rose” is by far the largest and healthiest rose in the garden.
I enjoyed visiting the garden of another gardener and hearing the stories of the plants. Many years ago I read a book called, “Passalong Plants,” by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing, which details the origin of many plants common to Southern gardens before most people had extra money to shop at garden centers.
Do you have stories about plants in your garden? Contact me at maryann@onehubcapfarm.com if you would like to share them. Thank you to everyone who has visited the farm, located at 1236 Muller Road, Blythewood, this year. We are open Fridays and Saturdays from 9-6 for you-pick flowers and for bouquets. Visit https://www.onehubcapfarm.com for more information.
