{"id":7782,"date":"2010-09-26T16:03:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T00:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/?p=7782"},"modified":"2010-09-27T03:43:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T12:13:28","slug":"gardens-in-decatur-ga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/gardens-in-decatur-ga\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardens in Decatur, GA"},"content":{"rendered":"

I volunteered for the Decatur Garden Tour <\/a>this weekend and my friend Kathleen and I were able to visit a few gardens in the morning, before long awaited rains began just before my shift in the afternoon. Longtime garden designer\u00c2\u00a0Ryan Gainey<\/a>‘s compound is always a treat and he presided over his five dogs, who chased after us down one of his magical paths.<\/p>\n

Coming into the garden, we passed by his 1933 Ford, in mint condition.<\/p>\n

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the treehouse is the real thing, you can go up by small steps to view the gardens below, filled with local sculptures.<\/p>\n

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the guest cottage is a charming retro place, fitted out with kitchen and bedroom.<\/p>\n

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Christine Sibley was a renowned Atlanta ceramicist; this is her Sunflower chair.<\/p>\n

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Gainey’s main house is covered with vines and so much green that the dormer seems to be growing.<\/p>\n

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one of the few formal aspects to the gardens is a manicured boxwood all\u00c3\u00a9e.<\/p>\n

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the original greenhouse is one reason Gainey bought the property 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

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Ryan Gainey and me.<\/p>\n

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Many other gardens on the tour were worth a visit – we saw about four. These are various shots from each.<\/p>\n

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Raised beds for veggies makes sense in a region working with water conservation and droughts.<\/p>\n

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Bamboo makes wonderful screens, but has to be managed carefully.<\/p>\n

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TN fieldstone was hauled in for this hard landscape.<\/p>\n

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This small garden shed set into a large level yard, was built by a local carpenter.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t get photos of the last garden due to rain, but the layout was a front lawn turned edible yard, via the Decatur ‘Lawns to Lettuce’ program. Old cardboard, layered newspaper and cheap dirt was brought in to start a June garden that turned remarkably productive. Vines, melons, gourds, vegetables and herbs had already been harvested and plans to reduce more lawn were in place.<\/p>\n

The Oakhurst Community \u00c2\u00a0Garden Project <\/a>sponsored the contest for the edible front lawn, and they work to teach environmental awareness through their hands-on education programs. I look forward to my own garden’s rewewal once I haul in a ton of old newspapers, free bark mulch and mushroom compost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I volunteered for the Decatur Garden Tour this weekend and my friend Kathleen and I were able to visit a few gardens in the morning, before long awaited rains began just before my shift in the afternoon. Longtime garden designer\u00c2\u00a0Ryan … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,984],"tags":[27,982,983,980,976,978,981,224,979,457,985,986,987,977,119],"class_list":["post-7782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-meanderings","category-gardens-2","tag-art","tag-ceramics","tag-christine-sibley","tag-cottage-gardens","tag-decatur","tag-edible-lawns","tag-fieldstone","tag-gardens","tag-lawns-to-lettuce","tag-mulch","tag-mushroom-compost","tag-newspaper-mulch","tag-oakhurst-community-gardens","tag-ryan-gainey","tag-sculpture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7782"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7839,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions\/7839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}