Andalusia’s Outdoor Learning Center

July 18, 2020 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

When the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation decided it was time in 2002 to make the author’s farm home in Milledgeville, Georgia, available for public tours, we began exploring various ways we could attract visitors to return to the property after they had already seen the house and outbuildings. Of course, the almost-worshipful fans of O’Connor would travel great distances to make the pilgrimage multiple times and never tire of standing at the door of her bedroom/study, strolling around the farm complex, or sitting in the rockers on the wide front porch to read, chat, or simply gaze across the lawn at the line of trees in the distance. I wrote a post about these folks several years back. However, as the director of the organization, I was charged with developing activities, programs, and attractions that would bring less-devoted visitors back to Andalusia, including locals.

During the thirteen years I was at Andalusia, we developed an annual lecture series, brought authors to the farm, hosted an annual Bluegrass concert, and worked with other institutions and organizations to sponsor various programs on site and around town. We also opened a gift shop that would bring local residents out to the farm, especially near the holidays. We welcomed groups to the property for school field trips, college classes, book club meetings, and even a wedding. Our ongoing restoration projects attracted people from around the state interested in historic preservation.

All these efforts paid off and boosted the annual visitation numbers, which also increased revenue through sales, fees, and donations. The most ambitious project we undertook toward this end was designed to attract visitors who may not have much interest in O’Connor or her work at all – hard to imagine. Beginning in 2003, the Foundation applied for and received a series of grants from private organizations to develop an outdoor learning center. This long-term project helped us expand the interpretation of Andalusia by making the natural connection between O’Connor’s work and the landscape that inspired so much of it.

A good portion of Andalusia is covered in trees, with open fields interspersed across the property. In some areas, the forest is dense enough to act as a buffer from the encroaching development that surrounds Andalusia. A common image in many of O’Connor’s stories is a line of trees, which often serves as a metaphorical passageway to revelation. The woods can be an area of sanctuary or the place for terrifying encounters. At other times, trees are personified, like witnesses to the events unfolding in the story.

The first phase of the outdoor learning center was the renovation of a half-acre livestock pond located down the hill and in view from the front porch of the main house. The pond dated back to the 1950s when the farm was operating as a dairy. Understandably, when in 1976 the PBS producers were looking for a location to shoot their film adaptation of O’Connor’s short story, “The Displaced Person,” they selected Andalusia. Both the opening and closing scenes of that movie were filmed from the dam of the pond, looking back up the hill at the main house. We hired a local independent contractor who had retired from the U.S. Soil and Conservation Department. His team drained the old pond and completely rebuilt the dam with a new drainage pipe. It took several months for the spring fed pond to completely fill again. It was beautiful.

Restored pond and main house at Andalusia

All visitors to O’Connor’s home could appreciate this easily accessible water feature, but for her readers, the pond may have taken on even greater significance. As a devout Roman Catholic, Flannery O’Connor understood the symbolic importance of water, especially the Sacrament of Baptism, and incorporated the theme in her fiction. To many of O’Connor’s characters, water represents purity, initiation, sanctuary, and salvation. Water provides both literal and figurative cleansing. Some of the most climactic scenes in her fiction involve water.

The second phase of the project took several years to fully accomplish and consisted of two nature trails. The first was a short trail around the pond. The second was a much longer trail through the forest taking off on either side of the dam of the pond. Again, we hired our local pond builder to design the trail and cut the eight-foot wide path through the trees. In two places it crossed Tobler Creek, which runs through the middle of the 544-acre property. In the following years after the trail’s completion, we installed bridges over the creek, other foot bridges over wet areas, benches and picnic tables, and interpretive signs. We were fortunate to have plenty of volunteers from the community, from Georgia College in Milledgeville, and from boy scout troops to help with these enhancements to the trail.

Again, this feature of the property is attractive to a broad audience, including school groups and locals looking for a place to enjoy the outdoors and perhaps to get a glance at wildlife. Andalusia is home to a variety of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Natural stands of pine and hardwoods, along with the open field areas, are ideal habitats for deer, songbirds, dove, quail, turkey, and squirrels. The undergrowth in the forest offers an environment suitable for smaller animals such as rabbits, chipmunks, armadillos, lizards, and snakes. The waterways and floodplains provide food and shelter for beavers, frogs, turtles, and aquatic birds, including the great blue heron. Natural predators on the property include foxes, coyotes, and birds of prey such as hawks and owls.

In 2010, the Foundation decided to name the outdoor learning center after Dr. Bernard McHugh Cline, an uncle of Flannery O’Connor. Dr. Cline was a physician who practiced in Atlanta and acquired the Andalusia property in the early 1930s. He enjoyed raising and riding horses on the farm when he came down from Atlanta on the weekends. Dr. Cline also purchased wooded tracts to the north of the farm from other owners, which remained undeveloped for many years as a wildlife preserve.

The development of the outdoor learning center added to the aesthetic value of Andalusia, but it also provided funding opportunities from grants and donations that even extended beyond the outdoor resources. A major organization that supported the nature trail’s construction later made a significant gift toward the restoration of one of the outbuildings at the farm. Professors and students used the pond and trails to conduct various experiments and to identify and catalog the flora and fauna there. The Foundation hosted workshops, lectures, and other programs exploring the natural resources of the center. I was as pleased with the outcome of this project as I was with any of our accomplishments at Andalusia.

Gardening Comes Second Only to Reading

April 15, 2017 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ 1 Comment

Many years ago, my two sons gave me a special gift for Father’s Day that I am still using now, all the time, 365 days out of the year. The gift was a fabricated flat, natural-looking stone that is engraved with the sentence: GARDENING COMES SECOND ONLY TO READING. It was the perfect present because, for me at least, that declaration is quite true. I would argue that my family actually comes first (I hope they would agree!), and I could certainly make the case for several more seconds and thirds, with music taking a prominent place near the top of the list. Both of my boys knew then, as they still recognize now, that gardening is a passion for me — something on which I am willing to spend plenty of hard-earned dollars. I have lived in three different locations since they presented me with that engraved stone, and it is still part of the hardscape of my gardens today.

I became interested in landscaping and ornamental gardening in 1987, shortly after my sons’ mother and I bought our first house. I had started working in a public library two years earlier, and I was fascinated by gardening magazines and books that I was cataloging. I wanted to have a yard with more than just an expanse of grass and a few foundation shrubs around the house. I wanted to create a little oasis! I started building my own personal library of gardening books, learning as much as possible about soil condition, hardiness zones, watering, fertilizing, and plant identification. I didn’t have much disposable income in those years, so I started out small and concentrated on a few specific areas, such as the side entrance to our house that we used most often. A few years later we started a family and moved into a larger house on a steeply sloping lot. It was a challenging yard, but over the years I began to mold it into something that I could work with and make attractive. One of the most successful projects was the creation of a lush entry-way garden leading from the parking area to the front door, which is pictured in the photograph above. Before moving away from that house, I also created two azalea islands under oak and sweet gum trees in the front yard, a pathway leading through ornamental trees and shrubs in the backyard, and my first small pond with a waterfall. (See my post from May 17, 2016 to learn more about the waterfalls and ponds I have designed through the years.)

When I met my second wife, she was living on a lake in central Georgia. When we married, I moved in with her. The previous owners of this lake house had invested considerably in the landscape, but my wife had made several improvements before we were married including upgrading the irrigation system, replacing an old patio, removing pine trees, and installing ornamental shrubs and trees. We decided to have our wedding ceremony on the patio overlooking the lake and a small pond and waterfall that I finished just a few days before the big day. Over the next two years I added plants and landscape lights around the pond to make the area into a separate garden spot, complete with a bird feeder and a bench.

The new and expanded patio was a perfect place to add a container garden, so we began looking for interesting pots, such as the sculpted face pot and stand that we affectionately named Annabel — the face on the pot looks melancholy and reminds us of the subject of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee.” The patio container garden was framed by a beautiful stand of Loropetalum shrubs that my wife had planted shortly after she moved into the house. This garden was completed by a chiminea and a hot tub, which is just out of view at the lower left corner of the photo above. The gently sloping grass of the yard and the view of the large cove beyond were a perfect backdrop to this little slice of paradise just outside the sliding glass doors leading from our master bedroom.

In 2013 we moved to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in northeast Georgia. This part of the state is in a different plant zone than our previous location. As such there are some semi-tropical species that we can no longer have in our yard, but other ornamentals that need cooler temperatures are perfectly at home here. Our growing season is a week or two shorter also, but climate change is bringing earlier springs and extended autumns as the years go by. The previous owners of this house did a fine job of building the “bones” of this property, with a large planting island in the front yard and a fairly deep shrub bed in front of the house. We have made a few changes, such as adding some annual planting beds and thinning some of the dwarf Nandina on the side of the house. We have also added to the plants in the front island (pictured above) and covered it all with a healthy layer of wood chips. The greatest addition we have made to the property is the installation of an in-ground swimming pool with a waterfall, providing us with yet another opportunity to create a new garden oasis. Although I did not build this “pond,” my wife and I did help with the design. We have worked very hard over the last two years on the landscaping around the pool by installing a river rock border, bringing in new plants, and arranging container plantings around the decking. The sound of running water is such a pleasant feature of this space, which of course, is also a perfect area for enjoying my first passion . . . reading.

Building Ponds and Waterfalls

May 17, 2016May 18, 2016 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ 3 Comments

Since starting this blog over a year ago, I have written several posts about waterfalls my family has visited in recent years. I am attracted to water. Some of my best memories from childhood through the present involve vacations at the beach, tubing down rivers, kayaking on ponds and lakes, and swimming in pools. There are very few sounds that are more calming to me than waves crashing against the shore. I love the music that water makes as it moves in nature — creeks, rivers, cascades, and falls. I like how water divides land, how it reflects the sky and sparkles like diamonds with bright sunlight. It is cliche to say that water is the source of life, and yet it is an indisputable fact that life on this planet would be impossible without water.

My appreciation for the gifts of water led me to begin contemplating about ten years ago how I could incorporate water into my garden. I had seen ponds at homes and in public places, but I had never thought about creating one for myself. Then I got divorced. When such an emotional life-changing event occurs, some people turn to abusing alcohol, taking drugs, or other reckless behavior. But, I have two sons who were both teenagers when my marriage ended. They needed me to be sober, responsible, and engaged in their lives as much as possible within the limits imposed by the breakup. Besides, addiction is not a problem for me, nor is it how I combat stress, anger, sadness, or any of the other strong feelings that accompany the dissolution of a marriage. I needed a distraction, something that could occupy my mind and muscles while getting me out of the house. So I started digging a hole in the backyard.

It took me several days just to dig the hole, and almost that long to get the sides level. I read books. I watched videos. I drew pictures and diagrams. I had a fairly steep embankment running down the side of my house (I ended up keeping our house) that extended into the fenced back yard and somewhat leveled out beside the posts of the back deck. I envisioned a cascading waterfall built into the bank, where I had planted an assortment of shrubs several years earlier. I consulted with a local landscape supply store about liners, flex hose, pumps, skimmers, and rocks. The rocks I purchased were generally no larger than a honey dew melon, and I didn’t have a lot of money left after buying the mechanical supplies. My property was bordered in the back by woods and a small creek. Fortunately, my younger son was quite enthusiastic about the project as it developed, and was more than willing to help me drag rocks from the creek bed and up the hill to the pond site. We moved a LOT of rocks, some of which were quite large. My back will never be the same. It took several weeks to finish, but the end product was really beautiful. I even bought a few fish to complete the package. Furthermore, the process of building the pond gave me the distraction I desperately needed and an opportunity to spend some quality time with my young teenager when he really needed my attention.

When my second wife and I got married, I moved in with her to a house located on a Georgia Power Company lake. Even before we got married and I moved away from my house, I was already missing my pond. Of course, there were several million gallons of water within a stone’s throw of our back door, and we had huge, clear windows looking out on the large cove where we lived. I could fish in our back yard, climb onto a jet ski right off our dock, and go swimming without leaving home. We were planning to get married on the patio looking out over the lake, and I was determined the sound of running water was going to be the music for our ceremony. I went to work a couple of months before the wedding. This time, I didn’t have a steep slope to work with, so I created a small “hill” for a waterfall using the dirt I removed for the pond. The setting didn’t look as natural as the first pond, but I was able to landscape and plant sufficiently around the perimeter to make this second pond attractive.

Now we have left the lake house behind, along with our former jobs, and have moved to live and work in the north Georgia mountains. I’m not sure my body could have taken the punishment of building a third pond. It is quite grueling, especially digging the hole and then hauling and positioning the rocks. But my wife and I both love water. We seek it when we go on hikes. We soak it up when we make our annual trips to the coast. We spend many hours during the warmer months on nearby lakes cruising around in our kayaks. We needed water at our new home, but there were no streams in sight of our property. So we splurged. We hired someone to build a pond and a waterfall for us at our new home. It took the better part of a summer, but our contractor is an artist. He took great care preparing the location behind our house, even though we were certain there wasn’t enough room for the size project we had in mind. He made it fit, and he made it magnificent. Once again, we are mesmerized by the sound of a cascading waterfall for at least seven months out of the year. True, this third pond doesn’t look quite as authentic or natural as the smaller ones I created, but it has most certainly exceeded all our expectations.

Pool