All the Dirt on Gardening

The Welty garden in Jackson MS has been restored to its original design and is open to the public.  We stopped there to walk through the famous garden rooms and down the Woodland Garden path to the rebuilt summer retreat. The Tudor Revival house built in 1925 became the home of 16-year-old Eudora, her parents, Christian and Chestina, and her two brothers, Edward and Walter.  Eudora lived in the home off and on throughout her lifetime, gardening with her mother while she was alive, taking over the management of the three-fourths-acre and then being unable to maintain it. The Eudora Wely Foundation ( http://eudorawelty.org ) operates the house though it is owned by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The gardens at the house, “my mother’s garden,” were designed and created in 1925 by Chestina.  Susan Halsom, author of “One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Homeplace”, restored the landscape. Halsom guides a group 15 gardening volunteers ...