Presenting the best of winter

I consider myself very lucky to garden in the Southeast, where there are four very distinct seasons, yet gardens grow and bloom year-round. Winter in a Southern garden is quiet, but far from silent. Colors are more muted, the sky a brighter blue, and the birds more evident and lyrical.

Your own garden should have that feeling in winter — a feeling of discovery, welcome, and subtle beauty. One garden that exemplifies this is Hills & Dales Estate, a short drive from Lee County in LaGrange, Georgia. A century and a half ago Ferrell Gardens in LaGrange was known as one of the finest in the South. A few decades earlier, in 1841, Sarah Farrell and her husband moved to terraced cotton fields owned by her family. (The terraces are still visible today on the property.) By the turn of the century Sarah Ferrell’s home garden was seen as a park. She welcomed visitors to enjoy the terraced gardens, including “Lovers Lane,” a long narrow walkway bordered by tall boxwood. Later, an aging Sarah asked friend and frequent visitor Fuller Callaway to buy the property when she died. Her family was not interested in it, and he so obviously loved the gardens.

He did buy the gardens in 1911 and began clearing weeds and edging the extensive boxwood, both neglected during the estate settlement.

In 1916 Ida and Fuller Callaway and their two sons moved into a new Italianate home on the crest of the hill. The Callaways' changes to the gardens were subtle, mainly adding statuary and benches that complemented the architecture of their new home, and creating the herb garden and greenhouse —a beautiful piece of architecture in itself, filled with orchids and ferns. Ida Callaway renamed their home Hills & Dales.  

When Ida Callaway died in 1932, several years after her husband, sons Cason and Fuller bid against each other for the family home. Fuller Jr. won and moved into Hills & Dales with his wife Alice. Cason and his wife Virginia later created the 13,000-acre Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, naming it after Ida Callaway.

Alice Callaway became a loving caretaker of Hills & Dales and lived there for the next six decades with Fuller Jr. In 1997, she met with the Garden Conservancy to assure the preservation her home and historic garden. She died a year later. Hills & Dales Estate, now operated by the Fuller E. Callaway Foundation, opened to the public in 2004.

Hills & Dales Estate, only 45 minutes from Opelika, offers a wonderful opportunity to tour a historic garden and home, and that opportunity will soon improve. Although open for renovation tours this winter, in May 2010 all three floors of the Italianate home will be furnished and open for tours for the first time.

Although the gardens are ever changing and always beautiful, the quiet, meditative mood and rich history seems more evident in winter. Pansies, winter hazel, and camellias add color, but winter is when the garden and the trees show their structure, especially the large China-fir framing a curved bench and the allée of magnolias planted from seed at the end of the Civil War.

Hills & Dales Estate, 1916 Hills & Dales Drive, LaGrange, 30240. Phone 706-882-3242. More information: www.hillsanddales.org.