Showcase Garden
Grace Episcopal Church Garden,
Mt. Meigs, Alabama

By Andy Scott

I am deeply gratified to see Grace Episcopal Church in Mt. Meigs, Alabama featured as a showcase garden. My father Jim Scott planned and built the garden in honor of his parents, John and Ellie Scott.

History of the church: Grace Church was built in the 1890's in the carpenter gothic style at Mt. Meigs, a country cross-roads outside Montgomery. For most of its history, the parish consisted of only the one-room church itself, which holds about 70 people. Set amidst pine forests and cotton fields, it had a beaten-dirt parking lot out front and a dusty graveyard behind. When I was growing up, it was a rare Sunday when the church was more than half-full. Most parishioners were related to me.

What we lacked in numbers, however, we made up in eccentricity. For example, my great aunt was not only the organist but was also a motorcycle enthusiast. On Sundays, this elderly women dressed in Episcopalian liturgical finery -- red and white embroidered organist's robes -- jammed a helmet on her head, and motorcycled to church, robes whipping behind her.

It was perhaps this eccentric spirit that made my father look out the window during a service one day in 1975 and decide that what the place really needed was a fine English-style garden. Grace Church was not a likely candidate for such refinement. The church did not have air conditioning, and the acolyte (me) regularly fainted during summer services. There was a bee-hive in the walls. Honey oozed into the church beside the altar, and bees occasionally got loose inside and attacked the priest. In the winter, the ancient open-flame gas space heaters singed your clothes if you sat too close to the end of a pew. Nevertheless, Dad began work on the garden.

History of the gardens: Over the years Dad walled off an area in front of the church and coaxed a lawn to grown in the former dirt parking lot. He planted stands of azaleas and rimmed the church with flower beds. He built secret patios and fountains and meandering brick paths in the deep woods behind the church. And, in the eccentric spirit of the place, he built a big tree house, reached by a sweeping staircase, in oaks in the front yard.

Partly because of these transformations and partly because Montgomery was spreading towards Mt. Meigs, the church began to grow. It got its first full-time priest. Services began to fill up, and a second Sunday service was added. It added a parish house. The church and its gardens became popular for weddings (some conducted in the tree house). Perhaps for the first time in its history, the church was thriving.

In 1996 a tornado made a direct hit on the church and knocked down dozens of old-growth trees. There were so many trees down that the church was invisible from the road. Although huge pines and oaks lay scattered like pick-up sticks and one tree leaned against the church -- making the wall bow in by several feet -- amazingly, neither the church nor the parish house sustained major damage. The gardens, however, were wrecked.

Downed trees knocked over brick walls and rooted up paths. The wind shredded ornamental plants. The tree house and the oaks that held it were kindling. And, of course, the thick canopy of trees that was one the garden's crowning glories was gone entirely. Over several weeks the congregation cleared away the trees in front of the church with cranes and logging equipment. The fallen trees behind the church were inaccessible, however, because the graveyard prevented heavy machinery from getting into position.

The solution? An anonymous donor arranged for International Paper's logging helicopter to fly up from the Gulf Coast. This helicopter spent two days ferrying huge sections of trees over the top of the church and out to surrounding fields. It gently plucked up the tree that leaned against the church, and the church groaned and popped back into position, no worse for wear.

Undeterred, Dad rebuilt the walls and the paths but revamped the garden from a shade garden to an open-sun garden. Today, there is no evidence of the destruction. And the church continues to grow. It has just finished a new, much bigger parish house, although all services are still held in the original sanctuary. Visitors are welcome, but arrive early to get a seat.

As for the present state of the garden, I defer to Robert William Gooding's excellent description.

Andy Scott

Previous Showcase Gardens:
Grace Episcopal Church Garden by Robert William Gooding
Wave Hill
Opus 40
Stonecrop Gardens
Joan Treis, Woodmere Wildflower Garden
John Guglielmelli, San Francisco
Sunshine Farm & Gardens
Melissa Clark, Chevy Chase
Longhouse Reserve

Send us your Story:
YourStory@AmericanGardenMuseum.com