Magic and Memories
BY KATE REYNOLDSPHOTOGRAPHY BY RIMAS ZAILSKAS
Some come to know of it by reputation. Some stumble upon it serendipitously, while walking along a quiet side street in the quaint little town of Saluda. You may catch a glimpse through a garden gate of a place that seems at once feral and tended. And it draws you like an enchantment.Walter and Sherry Hoover’s Charles Street garden does possess a certain magic. A mere 150 by 100 feet, it gives the illusion of a far more extensive footprint — a warren of secret places and unexpected turns enveloped by an ever-changing interplay of texture and filtered light. Wandering its narrow, winding paths through myriad outdoor rooms, you lose your sense of direction and time.
“The vegetation creates a veil, a barrier to the outside world,” explains Walter. “It insulates you. You don’t see, in a straight line, from one side of the garden to the other. It’s broken up visually by plantings and arches so you don’t get a real sense of the size.”
It’s part sleight of hand and part hard work. When the Hoover’s purchased the property over 30 years ago, there was little but bare bones. The steeply sloping parcel surrounding the 1920s summer cottage had been virtually stripped. “The lady who owned it took out all the shrubbery to landscape her new house,” explains Walter. “But that was typical at the time in small country towns — you just dug up what you wanted to take with you.”
A key element that could not be transported, however, is a mammoth chestnut oak, the fulcrum of the landscape. The largest known specimen in the Pacolet Area Conservancy region (which includes holdings in Polk, Transylvania and Henderson counties), it is listed as one of about a dozen ‘treasure trees’ in Saluda.
The oak has been estimated to be 200 to 225 years old by the arborist who examined it for registration — strong, proud and entwined with English ivy. “Many people have advised me to take the ivy out of the tree,” says Walter, “but I remind them that there are oak trees in England that have had ivy growing in them for 300 years. Until it gets out over the canopy, the ivy stays. I like it — it softens the appearance and feel of the garden.”
While some might view this as laissez-faire, it is actually pragmatism. Hoover’s approach to his lush plot is to work harmoniously with what is present and what evolves — encouraging rather than imposing.
“The azaleas are 15 to 20 feet high. I’ve never pruned them. I take out the deadwood, but I let them do what nature intended them to do, which is to be tall and open and airy, not stiff like little Prussian soldiers.”
Even losses are viewed from an affirmative perspective. Pointing out some dogwoods that have suffered from anthracnose and hemlocks struggling against woolly adelgid, he shrugs with resignation. “My philosophy about it is that things come and things go — when nature forces something out, something else will take its place. It opens new opportunity.”
There are exceptions, however. Take the moisture loving irises that he and Sherry propagate for their specialty wholesale nursery: Japanese iris (Iris ensata), North American Wetland iris (Iris versicolor) and ‘Yellow Flag’ (Iris pseudacorus). “I do fight Mother Nature in some things; I’m not a purist in that sense,” he admits. “I fight iris borers. I’m not so generous when it comes to that!”
And while Hoover may not exactly force the order of things, he certainly does nudge it a bit. “We travel several times a year and are always seeing things that we’d like in our garden, but often they won’t do well in this climate,” he explains.
The solution is container plantings: potted palmettos, purchased at a roadside stand in the low country add an unexpected coastal flavor to the woodland sensibility and magnificent calla lilies, sheltered indoors during the winter, are brought out to bloom when the weather warms. “I appropriate things off of roadsides — my loquats were grown from seeds picked up on the street in Charleston,” he notes proudly.
Found treasures and volunteers are welcome here, taking their place alongside the many ‘pass-along’ plants — gifts from friends and relatives — that make the garden a memory book of sorts. “Every time I walk through the garden and see a particular rose, I think of Miss Hattie McCutcheon, an old farm lady from the coastal plain of South Carolina, where I grew up on a tobacco farm,” says Walter.
“She had an old fashioned, broom swept garden,” he recalls. “There was one rose that she doted over, a hybrid tea rose called ‘La France’ — a wonderful, carefree cultivar. There’s some of it in the upper garden.” These legacies are everywhere: 30-year-old dwarf boxwoods, a house-warming gift, line a shady walkway and a resplendent ‘Dr. Van Fleet’ climbing rose, a transplant from Walter’s mother’s chicken yard, gestures dramatically beside the garden gate.
“I try to pass plants on to others as well, and hopefully years from now they will think of me as I think of these people,” he reflects.
Even the ornamental arches are draped in Spanish moss, gathered by his sister in South Carolina as it falls out of the live oak trees. “The birds love it,” Walter smiles, “they come and pick off strands for their nests.”
The Hoovers delight in sharing their space with winged creatures, and with the human guests that they host in the bed and breakfast suite that nestles beneath their house. Visitors seem to particularly enjoy the pleasures of the garden and the avian activity that it attracts. Weekend mornings often find them in quiet contemplation, ensconced with the Sunday paper and a cup of coffee, in one of the secluded nooks that pepper the property.
In creating this sanctuary, the Hoovers have applied a relaxed approach. “The garden was not planned,” Walter says, “it developed organically over time. Wherever there was space, whatever plant I had, that’s where it went. I planted around, and with what existed.”
A stone driveway that once led from the street to a one-car garage has been divided into terraces and festooned with clematis and wild sweet peas in shades of purple, pink and lavender. A tranquil pond near the home’s main entrance was born of a dilemma — making something positive out of a problem.
“There was a chestnut oak here, the mate of the one in the lower garden, that began to decline over a 20 year period,” Walter recollects. “A crew came in and took the tree down section by section, leaving a huge stump. I whittled away at the stump until I had gone about 20 inches below ground level and then put in a pond liner.”
The Hoovers seem to take the challenges, and the opportunities, in stride. “People assume that it’s a high maintenance garden, but we don’t think about it that way. We live in this garden, so it’s like sweeping the floor or vacuuming. It’s more a way of life than a chore. We’re just taking care of our living space.”
He pauses a moment, taking in the beauty of the place. “It’s a nice life,” he says, “and we’re blessed. But you also have to work at it…you can’t just expect life to drop gifts in your lap.”
You can, however, taken what you’re given, weave a spell and create something truly magical.
