A few years ago, Barnsley Gardens in Adairsville, GA, was a botanical skeleton buried beneath a tangle of vines. Today, the restored garden is the heart of one of northwest Georgia's newest golf resorts. And some say it's also still home to the ghosts of its founders, Godfrey and Julia Barnsley. The garden and its ghost story both got their start in the 1840s, when Godfrey brought Julia to his 10,000-acre estate, hoping the fresh air and open spaces would cure her consumption. They planned their landscape following the ideals of landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing.
Most Southeast gardeners know the liatris by way of the floral industry.
From flower arrangements to basic bouquets offered in supermarkets, liatris blooms are often included as spiky purple wands to add color to gift planters. Liatris is yet another native American plant that Europeans have hybridized and grown in large scale, then exported back to this country as cut flowers. Like most any southeastern gardener on a fall day, I notice nature's slow progression to winter. But I also like to think of this time as a second chance to create a spectacular show in the garden. The plants' golden and jewel tones we know so well in autumn are brought about by our weather patterns and the absence of chlorophyll ina leaf's cell.