| I met Elizabeth Lawrence for the first time on a cold winter day in December 1974. It was not the sort of day to pick for a garden tour in North Carolina, even when the garden belongs to the author of a classic book entitled Gardens in Winter. Sky, air, and ground were wet and cold in a particularly penetrating, southern way. But my stay in Charlotte was to be a brief one, and the invitation had been accepted. I drove the leafless streets until I came to Ridgewood Avenue. One block away I could already see the first evidence of a garden "where at all times of the year... there is some plant in perfection of flower or fruit." Miss Lawrence's own words reproached me in my doubt. |
| Even from the street, I could see a garden that was a galaxy of blossoms. Camellias by the walk bloomed brilliantly against the gray sky, and beyond, a witch hazel wreathed the door in gold. I'm not sure that we had even finished introducing ourselves before Miss Lawrence ushered me into the living room, saying, "I want you to see what I found today." |
| Along a wooden table, a dozen little flowers, all different, spilled over caper jars under a wide, uncurtained window. Outside, a thicket of emerald bamboo screened the glass; through it flowed the light of the tropics on this, one of the darkest days of the year. Miss Lawrence could have been quoting A Southern Garden: "I like to leave flowers in the garden when the weather is pleasant, but in winter I bring them in out of the cold. On many chilly days I cut little bouquets of wintersweet and spring heath, a blue viola, perhaps a paper-white narcissus, a camellia, an iris, and a few spikes of the pale blue flowers of rosemary." |
| Later I would visit Elizabeth Lawrence often. She would meet me at the door with secateurs in hand and say, "Go to the garden, clip what you like. Then we'll talk." I never had nerve enough to take more than one small piece of ivy for rooting, now moved four times. In those days, I was a graduate student at Chapel Hill, and my "garden" was sandwiched between the back door of an apartment and a laundry line. My plants came from ditches, construction sites, and waste areas. But Elizabeth interrogated me about it as if my plot were Kew; every plant, even my weeds, interested her. I learned very quickly to have at least one date for her: "Elizabeth, Thalictrum aquilegifolium bloomed May 7," I practically shouted almost as soon as I saw her on one visit. But she was patient and |
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