Gardens

"This is the most diverse collection of plants found anywhere in the world outside of a tropical rainforest, and we wanted to keep it forever wild.”

If you would have told Lisa Frank 40 years ago that the woodlands she inherited when she bought her 1950s ranch house in Buckhead would turn into a whimsical garden, she would not have believed you. Frank was a busy writer who launched public relations departments at the High Museum of Art and Atlanta Botanical Garden. In the 1990s, she started dating Terry May, the then-superintendent for grounds at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. The gardener had permission to take home rare plants that the garden could not accommodate, and he started planting in Frank’s garden on a whim.

If you’re thinking of getting some new potted plants, prepare yourself for success by reading the nursery tags that say how much water and sun the plant needs. Those lush hanging baskets of ferns and pink petunias need water every day or so.

To me, lawns are a chore without payoff. I can’t eat grass. Grass is not fixing any carbon to speak of, nor does it attract birds or butterflies, which don’t eat grass either. If you, too, are tired of going in circles, consider replacing some lawn.

Marigolds are a good pick for Georgia’s spring and summer. If the plant is destined for a pot, pick a short variety. Otherwise, pick any variety. They come in orange and yellow, from big and puffy to tiny and dainty.

The amaryllis plant has a superpower: In just a few weeks in a tiny pot of dirt, this giant onion-looking thing sprouts a giant trumpet-shaped flower—in winter.

If your Ring camera caught somebody loading your brown paper bags of yard leaves off the sidewalk and into a hatchback, it might have been me, and I’m not sorry.

Gardens can get a bad rap in late summer—with wilting flowers and fewer blooms than in spring—but interior designer and author James Farmer added architecture and heat-tolerant plants so that his backyard excels even in August.

On the sunniest Deep South day, wisely planted under the dark green backdrop of a shady tree, a clump of coleus will shimmer with most all the pinks and greens and yellows of other flowers—without a single bloom.

No sun? No rain? No dirt? No problem. Sprouts can do without.