The Grateful Gardener

BY NOAH SALT • PHOTOGRAPHS BY GLENN DICKERSON

Pinehurst Luxury Homes Gardens

415 Fairway Drive, Southern Pines, North Carolina

“I’ll tell you a funny story about my passion for gardening,” says Cathy Smith. “I grew up in Miami where, because of the tropical cli- mate, everything is lush and alive with color. I was always outdoors, and plants always had a special attraction to me. In my 20s, I began potting up interesting plants to grow and give to my friends. I even started a small business making baskets of plants and flowers.
“I was always looking for ways to make things grow. One day, I had this crazy idea to give my Swedish Ivy birth control pills. It’s true. I dropped a pill in the watering can and watered my ivy with it, hoping it might stimulate growth.”
“Did it work?” wonders her garden visitor, admiring the some- what formal lines of her front yard garden where the early blooms in gracefully flowing beds include robust bleeding hearts, columbine and Virginia bluebells — all framed on one side by a new boxwood hedge and on the other by viburnum and hydrangea and an under- story of small flowering spring hardwoods.
“Did it ever,” says Smith with gusto. “Within almost no time, the leaves just tripled.”
Guiding her guest around her remarkable garden on three acres off Fairway Drive in Southern Pines, the garden-mad wife of Southern Pines’ popular Ford dealer smiles at her own unconventional experimentation in the garden — a true sign, many would tell you, of an old gardening soul at both work and play.
“I think of creating a garden as an almost sacred act,” Smith allows. “From my point of view, there’s something deeply spiritual about scratching in the dirt to help some little plant along — allow- ing the Lord’s work on this earth to just shine through. Gardening takes patience to do well. I mean, just look at that Solomon’s Seal —” she breaks off excitedly, heading off into her emerging spring beds to point out a small cluster of new iridescent leaves.
“Here’s a great little plant I’ve probably transplanted six or seven times in my garden, trying to find the perfect spot for it to thrive and grow. And look at it now — it’s really coming into its own.”
Smith’s garden, which islands the handsome brick manor house she shares with three of her eight children, three dogs and her hus- band, Bill, is effectively only a few years along — yet it reflects an attention to detail and touch of whimsy that expresses decades of acquired horticultural knowledge.

Smith’s first Sandhills garden surrounded the cottage she and Bill owned in Pinehurst Village back in the late 1990s. As a result of relocating from the Boone area, where she learned to grow huge vegetables and spectacular perennials in the dark soil and cooler mountain climate, her first task was to come to terms with this area’s heat and sand.
“This is such a challenging climate for a gardener. I had a vegetable garden that eventually became a parking lot,” Smith allows, pointing out that she soon enrolled in Moore County’s Master Gardener program and revised the languishing grounds at the corner of Chinquapin and Magnolia with the help of her friend Benjamin Bessette. After a few years of dedicated work, that garden flour- ished, and Smith routinely left her garden gate standing ajar ala Charleston’s Mrs. Whaley, proverbially inviting all curious garden seekers to poke around.
Emily Whaley, who passed away at her Flat Rock summer home a decade ago, was the celebrated home gardener whose flair for color and zest for creative garden experimentation showed generations of staid Charlestonians there was far more to having a garden than a few flowering azaleas on display. Whaley’s Church Street cottage garden gained worldwide attention through the writing of Rosemary Verey and others, and her own bestselling garden book, Mrs. Whaley’s Charleston Garden, which appeared a year before her death.
“As she knew, “ echoes Smith, “the point of having a gar- den, after all, is to share its beauty with others. That’s just shar- ing God’s glory in nature.”
Her next garden project was on the 20-acre plot she trans- formed in horse country. Her friend Bessette once again helped out. “It was a very different kind of garden, with a pond, a terrace, more of a country landscape rather than a conventional garden.”

Three years ago when the Smiths took possession of the antique brick house on
Fairway Drive, Smith’s first job as mistress of a new garden space — once more with design help from Bessette — was to draw more light into the property. “There were all these great trees and mature indigenous plants around the house, but everything was overgrown and really had to be thinned out and clear so the light and air could get into the garden.”
Today, her gardens are naturally segmented into areas that seem slightly more formal in places and decidedly more relaxed in others. Through a gate and down the steps into a lower backyard space, flowering clematis and sweet-scented shrubs are designed to attract birds in profusion. Whimsically scattered around this garden are dozens of unique bird houses, some of them quite old but nobly still in service. “I love these bird houses. We col- lected them over the years,” explains Smith. “They sort of tell a story of our travels.”As she speaks, perhaps half a dozen cardinals and other songbirds flit from one of the 20 or so feeding stations spread around the premises.
In an adjacent gated area reposes a striking- ly attractive raised-bed vegetable garden laid out in precise geometric patterns and linked by formal gravel footpaths, the clever handi- work of local garden designer Hervé Bernier.
On this cool mid-April day, vigorous broc- coli plants stand in healthy ranks along one bed, and new spinach is growing in vibrant tufts. Young potatoes are already well along, and so are garlic and onions. “Last year we had broccoli until Christmas,” provides Smith, noting that her home veggie garden was so productive she gave away tomatoes and picked cucumbers all summer and still had plenty left to put up in jars and make into veg- etable soup.
“The coming of spring — particularly April and May — put me into motion,” she says, leading the way back up her steps where only a moment ago a pair of hummingbirds paused to explore a vine in bloom. “This place is my sanctuary. I’m so blessed to be able to come out here and get my fingers into the soil. The beauty of it constantly surprises and delights me,” she adds. “And isn’t that what a garden is really meant to do? As with my children, I take such pleasure in seeing this garden grow and bloom and change. I’m forever saying thank you to the Lord for all of this.”
With that grateful coda, Smith picks some- thing for her kitchen and heads back up the steps to her home, leaving her garden gate invitingly ajar. Somewhere, you sense, Emily Whaleyissmiling. PS

May 2009 ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… PineStraw:The Art & Soul of the Sandhills