Carolina in My Mind

It is the chorus that keeps floating through my head. I first loved James Taylor during high school. I spent my time between him, Carole King, and Carly Simon. Guess the highway is calling us as well.



We are two Army brats that spent our early married life traveling the world with my sweet husband’s career in the Army. When time comes, I will have lived here 3 times longer than anywhere else in my life. Sure we have put done some roots here in Seaford, but change is something that we seem to embrace. With my sweetie retiring next year, it seemed like the time to make the move.
In the summer of 2010 we will be packing up and moving to a new place. What makes this move interesting is the choice of our new home. We almost did the old dart on a map to pick where we would go, sort of. We knew we wanted to be on a lake, in the south, inland enough that hurricanes would not bother us. In 2003 we got hit with Hurricane Isabel – just enough to make life a pain in the butt for a year. We were luckier than a lot of folks, we realize that. Each subsequent hurricane season gave me a knot in the pit of my stomach. It was time to go where the water doesn’t come into the house.

So using a website that lists property on inland lakes we started our search. I do like Virginia, though I have seen some of our lakes low during drought times. I know there are some lakes that are used for municipal water sources and others are primarily hydroelectric power. After looking for about a year, we settled on Lake Greenwood in South Carolina, a hydroelectric power lake. This lake is between 11,000- 12,000 acres and is very pretty. For those of us who garden this is a great place to be…home of Park Seed Company, Wayside Gardens, and now Jackson and Perkins.



Since 2010 will be here before you know it, time is of the essence. We did buy some land on the lake last March. It is an acre lot with about a 10% slope to the lake. Later this month we will go down to Greenwood and talk turkey with a couple of builders, landscape companies, and dock builders. Needless to say I have some specific ideas about plant material for the new place, but we need someone to install sod (remember the three dogs—can’t wait for seed to grow). I did spend a nice long morning with my favorite extension agent, picking his brain, showing him my ideas, and sharing the ‘plan’ I framed out. I have had a wish list on the sidebar of this blog for a while. Some of the plants are reminders of places we lived.

When we first got married we lived in an apartment on Chinkapin Trail…so Quercus muehlenbergii, Chinkapin Oak. Time in Frankfurt, Germany has some of the German named plants….some were ones we had in our garden, not necessarily German plants. From Germany we went to Texas—hence the yellow rose. I would love to grow Texas Bluebonnets, but I know they don’t always do well outside Central Texas; I will give them a try though. On to Florida for a short year, I just realized I don’t have a plant for Florida. Hmm, will have to think about what reminds me of Jacksonville. After Florida we went back to Germany, Spardorf. We had the garden in Spardorf. Afterwards we moved here. Many of the plants are Virginia natives that I think will do quite well in South Carolina.

The rest of the list is made up of various plants that have caught my eye. Some are new varieties, others are ones I like and want to include in the new landscape. So now I throw out the thought to some of you….if you could plan a whole new landscape…how would you do it?