Gardens in Edenton

If Albemarle Plantation was a dearth of gardens, Edenton is an ample sufficiency! Nearly every yard has a little spot tucked in next to a fence, or a porch, or down the driveway. If I had felt comfortable tramping thru lots of backyards I could have filled an album. Since I was not happy with that behavior, I'll show you some and tell you about others.

Since this is initially an English colony town, there are many formal plantings. The most interesting (and easiest to photograph) was the Cupola House. This is a 1780's house being restored, but someone has taken pretty good care of the gardens - both front and back. From the front it's a series of fenced in sections. The first one is mostly lawn with planting around the edges at the fence - mostly boxwood and crepe myrtles. I'm sure there are azaleas mixed in, too. The second one is a formal garden of triangles and squares, planted in a typical English manner of annuals and perennials. It's a bit over-grown, but clearly someone is taking care of it while the building is undergoing a face lift.

In the back is a mixture of formal and informal. Can you see the lovely arbor on the far side? It is nearly hidden under the vine that lives there. As much as the formal is not my cup of tea, this has a nice feel. I think the crepe myrtles help soften the formal feel. They have not done crepe murder here, so the trees are soft and vase-shaped. They have also trimmed many of the boxwood as cones, instead of balls as we normally see in Virginia. I wonder if they are creating "conifers"? Whatever the reason, I liked the result.

A block or two away I found this pretty fence row (right). It was a planting that appears to separate two properties. The white picket fence ran the full length from house to house, but about half way there was this planting that juts out at 90 degrees and is filled on both sides with exuberant perennials. There is a yucca near the sidewalk and then something fluffy and white that I did not know. The border on this side is hosta with blooming flowers behind it. The trees to the right are actually behind the fence on the "near" property. This is the type of planting I saw lots of places nestled up against whatever was available. There are many Queen Anne style homes with big porches and the hexagonal pavilions on the corners, so there were lots of spots to tuck a little planting.

But my favorite planting was along the street by a bed and breakfast. This is clearly a work of love. The street side of this raised bed is granite blocks that look like those used in the foundation of the building. The ends and inside of the bed are brick. It it about four feet wide [but unlike my new bed, can be worked from both sides!] and runs the entire length of the side of the building. There were three sections, and the plants seemed to vary according to light. Garland would have loved the section that was all white blooms - impatiens, white Gerbera daisies, baby's breath, and several things that I did not recognize. A second section had hosta, lavendar angelonia, heliotrope [ah, the smell!] and a gorgeous coleus. The final third was the sunniest and had multicolored flowers including daisies, more Gerberas, black-eyed susans, and more hosta. I find it interesting that there are hostas planted lots of places that are very sunny.

The "mound" of green about midway in the photo is actually a small arbor over the B&B sign that is covered with the fall blooming clematis that is just starting to bloom. The whole effect was lovely. I kept hoping the gardener would come out of the house so I could ask about the planting, but I finally had to move on to keep from loitering.

Overall, this is a lovely little town. Lots of old buildings from the 1700's, 1800's, and some interesting one from the early 1900's. It's a great place to dawdle.

Albemarle Plantation

As gardens go Albemarle Plantation was a disappointment. It was all so "groomed" - every blade of Bermuda grass [you already know my feelings on that] cut to 3/4-inch, and native grasses everywhere, with a crepe myrtle every 27 feet to break it up. It was pleasant to look at, but no imagination anywhere, and apparently no "personal" gardens at any of the homes.

The setting, tho, was another story. This is water cypress territory. Along all the swampy edges one could see cypress knees and here and there an intrepid tree growing out of the water like a triumphant king of some lost civilization of trees. The cattails were beautiful and often filled with birds. Mitchell saw two deer early one morning, and we saw a raccoon one afternoon. There were plenty of shore and sea birds, too, of course.

In Hertford I did not not many gardens accessible to us along the main streets, but the tea room did have a pretty little one. On a cooler day one could have eaten breakfast of lunch at a little table "out back" in a pretty setting.

Let's hope for more in Edenton - it's not named for the garden, but one can hope.

PS: About that mystery plant from Eastville Inn. I found another quite like it in Manteo. Beverly - the shop owner - said it was an "old rose" with a heavenly scent. I forgot to ask what color it bloomed, so am not sure it was exactly the same variety as the mystery plant, but it did have similar crinkly leaves and similar - altho smaller - hips.

Manteo to Albemarle Plantation

Manteo was such a charming spot that I hated to leave it on Thursday morning to start the real adventure into new territory. No one on our boat has ever been to any of the little places we will next visit. The Albemarle Sound runs roughly east and west with several small rivers feeding it from both sides. Manteo is at the extreme eastern end and now we headed west and to the north side of the Sound. The Sound is quite shallow, by Bay standards, ranging from less than five feet to a maximum of 20-25 feet deep. This makes it a perfect spot for crabbing, which the local watermen do with abandon. In Bay there is some small effort to keep the pots out of the main channels, but here in the Sound it seems that leaving your string of pots directly in or across the channel is considered normal. We spent much of our two-hour cruise slaloming around and among the pots. Otherwise, it was a nice cruise. With winds from the southwest it was a bit "lumpy", but on a comfort scale that is nicer than "bumpy" and overall quite pleasant.

My map above is not quite right. The red dot that it appears was our destination is actually the town of Hertford, which is about 10 miles north of Albemarle. The location is actually at the tip of that point, just to the right of the pointer. There is a smaller river - the Yeopin - whose mouth is just barely around the end of the point and Albemarle Plantation is there. The actual tip of the point - Harvey Point - is owned by the federal government and used for weapons testing. It has a very large restricted area around it and makes navigation down the middle of the Sound a bit tricky. That may also explain why the crab pots are so prevalent, since they cannot put them closer to shore in that area.

As its name would imply Albemarle Plantation is a retirement paradise. It's the kind of place that you could live and forget there is a real world anywhere. You have a choice of condos, townhouses or individual residences most facing either the golf course or the water - and the best to both. You have a fabulous dock, beautiful pool and fitness club, and social/golf club - what else could a person want? It's the sort of place where the golf cart is the major form of land transportation.

When we arrived it was quite windy and we welcomed the extra help supplied by a number of members of the Albemarle Sound Power Squadron, whose "port captain" had made arrangements for them to meet and help us. Many of them live right there, so it was not a huge sacrifice on their part, but a big help to us. They also scheduled their Friday night social event to include us. They treated us like family and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them. There were two couples who were also at Bay Creek last weekend, so Mitchell and I had met some of them previously.

Friday we rented a car and drove into the little town of Hertford, which is less than ten miles and the closest shopping - groceries, ABC, some nice little shops, a tea room where we had lunch, and a corner drug store with 60-cent ice cream. [If you are not a boater, you may not be aware that it is a law that boaters must immediately find the closest ice cream store within hours of making port. I am guessing that 20 years ago one couldn't keep ice cream on a boat, and so this was a necessity. With all the modern freezers you find nowadays, that is no longer the case - at least not on a power boat - but the law is still the law!] The tea room pictured above is one of the oldest structures in Hertford and is now run by three ladies who serve very good tea and a nice lunch. We really enjoyed it.

We also visited the tourist information center, where I learned that there are still Webbs living in the area. My mothers people come from Perquimans county way back, but I know little about it. Might require a trip by car sometime to search some records.
Hertford is also the home of Jim "Catfish" Hunter - a famous baseball player of the '70s and '80s. The mayor has a small museum in his honor at the information center. As far as I know he was not related to the Webbs.

Elizabethan Gardens - Manteo, NC

Had a fun adventure today - all by myself - at the Elizabethan Gardens. The Garden Club of North Carolina built this garden some years ago to commemorate the English women who came to the New World and brought with them their love of gardens. As I expected it had some very formal gardens, but there were also lots of natural areas and unexpected touches.

The Gardens are located about 3.5 miles from the Town Dock Marina where we are staying. We had hoped to rent bikes and ride up there, but there is no bike rental in town! so, I decided to walk. No one else was particularly interested or able, so I did it alone. With water and a snack packed I started out about 8:30 this morning - at a very slow pace. There is a fine walking/riding path all the way and I encountered only a few bikers along the way. There are several resting places with benches and [mostly working] water fountains, so I had several stops. I made two mistakes in my preparations - forgot to take a sweat towel and bug spray. Fortunately, I was able to remedy both once I arrived at the Gardens. It took me about two hours, but I really enjoyed the walk.

Altho the path was only a couple hundred yards from the water, I could not see it except occasionally down a street end. I passed old cottages - some lovingly fixed up and some falling down - a working farm, new developments and even some undeveloped land. Altho one has the feeling that there is not square inch of undeveloped water front, there still is plenty of space on this island once you get a block off the water.

The Gardens were very interesting. The formal center garden was the typical English manor garden with boxwood shapes filled with summer flowers - a lot of pentas in different colors. There was also a rose garden that was pretty disappointing. It has only six or eight plants, altho all are special in some way, but nothing was thriving. This time of summer it should be full of blooms, but all the plants appeared to be struggling. The natural walkways were more interesting to me than the formal spaces. There were hydrangeas of many varieties and types, as well as many azaleas (the former in bloom and the latter not, of course!) This oak leaf hydrangea was easily ten feet tall. Lots of shade loving perennials and annual bloomers for filler in the sunny spots. There are also several overlooks onto the Roanoke Sound where historians believe the Roanoke Colony was located.

The most interesting things, tho, were the sculpture. All of it has been donated, and I am sure the donors gave for specific reasons, which were not well explained. There is a huge - like 20 feet tall - bronze statue of Elizabeth. Ok, I got that one. The bronze work is spectacular, with the lace around the bottom of her dress showing intricate detail, and the rose in her hand is just perfect. There are many cairns and basins - most with water in them - which help with the peaceful feeling one finds there. And, then there were little surprises hidden away - some water features, some elves and other story book characters and some more formal pieces. I really enjoyed them all.

But by far the most interesting piece of sculpture was a full life size sculpture of Virginia Dare. It's carara marble, carved by an American artist in Rome and very pretty. You all know that history is not my strong point, altho I do usually muddle thru American history fairly well....but, I thought that Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Roanoke Colony and disappeared along with the entire colony when she was a toddler. Are you with me there? I am asking because the statue is of a full grown woman - a nude wrapped in a piece of fishing seine. Like Elizabeth, it is a gorgeous carving with lots of attention to detail, but I keep wondering if it is Virginia Wolff or Daisy Fitzgerald, or one of Max Parrish's models. I think it it's Virginia Dare then the artist used up a lifetime of "artistic license"!

Since we are traveling, I did not purchase a plant, but believe me.... I looked and considered. I am not convinced that I need to find a way to irrigate so that I can have some bear's britches!

I decided to fore go the two-hour walk back to the marina, so called a cab. But that is a story for another time. This is a really pretty place and I highly recommend it as a way to spend a couple of hours. The Lost Colony is next door and there is an historical part, but I didn't really feel like doing both, so that is a trip for another time. Stay tuned.