Happy winter greetings! I am thrilled to be Wing Haven’s new Lawrence Garden Associate. Having been acquainted with this garden for many years, I never truly took the time to visit with it as I do now. This is a most intimate garden. I am humbled by the mastery and success of the garden's design.

On July 27th, I posted about Elizabeth Lawrence's experience with buckeye seed from June of 1962. Her luck almost 50 years ago did not produce much by way of seed, thanks to little critters, but this year luck has been on our side!

"In midsummer, when heat and drought have drained all color from leaf and blossom - in spite of all of the city water that is poured on them - the surprise lily rises mysteriously from the ground. One day there is nothing, and the next there is a tall, pale stem…

"The dwarf bottlebrush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, is not really small flowered. The specific name applies only to the individual flowers. The inflorescence is an impressive slender spike, like a foxtail lily, from twelve to sixteen inches long, with apricot-tipped stamens standing out beyond the white flowers. …

“[Cyclamen] neapolitanum is a fall-flowering species, but I have had bloom as early as the Fourth of July. Last year the first flower came at the end of August, and buds continued to appear until early December, in spite of a series of hard frosts that put an end to all other flowers except Chinese violets.

"In early summer southern gardens come into a glory that has come to them only in recent years with the development of the day-lily. It is seldom that the perennial of the day proves the perennial of all others for the South, but this is one that thrives in all climates. …

"I cannot think why the yuccas are so little used. Once in midwinter I went into a little garden that had no claim to distinction in any season, but acquired the charm of simplicity when it was reduced by frost to a pattern of brick-edged walks accented by stiff rosettes of yuccas and framed by a clipped hedge." …

I thought a quick picture of the garden through Miss Lawrence's study today would be of interest. I often wonder how many hours Elizabeth spent sitting in front of this window watching and writing. The garden view has changed since I started the fellowship, mainly that the cherry laurel allee has been removed and started over, and the stone walls refurbished.

While carrying branches from Lawrence's Chaenomeles 'Apple Blossom' that I've been pruning this week since it's finished flowering, I noticed another quince at the curb shedding its bark.

"Last summer I never saw my toad - or toads. I have never been sure whether it is the same or several. He usually startles me hopping out from under a plant when I am weeding the border, and I think he lives in the rock wall. If toads are really so valuable I think something should be done to attract them, but I have never known what they like."

Being a focal point to the garden, we recently had the gate refurbished and today it was returned to the garden. Over the years, the top scroll had disappeared and we thought it was important to bring it back. …

"How beautiful it is when the garden becomes clear again; when no leaves blur the long straight line or gentle curve, or the restful circle laid on the square; when levels are sharply defined, and intervals between steps have the rhythm of falling water…”

"Adonis amurensis is a very difficult plant to get into one's possession. Sought out and ordered at last, it did not come until May, and the weak growth soon died away. I thought I had seen the last of it. But the lovely, lacy leaves began to unfurl the following February, and among them was a flower the color of buttercup and with a buttercup's sheen." …

"And now I have to confess that my choice for the first month of the year, the Chinese witch hazel, Hamamelis mollis, has none of the things I look for - except that it gives no trouble and stays in bloom for weeks. Its flowers, though utterly charming, are not spectacular; its habit is not graceful, its bark is dull, and its leaves are coarse... In spite of these failings, I consider this one of the ten or twelve best flowering shrubs and one that I cannot be without. …”

“It seems to me that there is never a time when some living thing is not pushing up from the ground, and that at the beginning of the year there is a more vital stirring. Canon Ellacombe said, "The garden is never dead; growth is always going on, and growth that can be seen, and seen with delight.”

"I would like to grow every snowdrop I ever heard of. Although I started many years ago to make as complete a collection as possible, I still have only the common sorts, for many are rare and very hard to come by - and difficult to establish as well."

“There are a number of fine evergreens that flower in the mid-south in winter, but the sweet Olive, Osmanthus fragrans, is outstanding. This is a very large but slow-growing shrub that should be planted only where there is space for it to develop to its full size... The sweet olive begins to bloom in September, and from then on through the winter the small white flowers perfume the air on warm days."

This is the gate to my garden. I invite you to enter in; not only into my garden, but into the world of gardens—a world as old as the history of man, and as new as the latest contribution of science; a world of mystery, adventure and romance; a world of poetry and philosophy; a world of beauty; and a world of work.