Tim Hinds
photo by Ferris Robinson
When Tim Hinds told me his new gardens at the Fairyland Club didn't cost him a penny, I didn't expect much. Maybe a patch of monkey grass and a couple of roadside day lilies.
WRONG! He has taken an overgrown, never-used patch of land alongside the tennis courts, and transformed it. For next to nothing! Every single, solitary flower, shrub and tree has been propagated naturally, or dug up by Tim from the woods surrounding the club or grown from seed. "Well, I did have to buy a little mortar to build the little rock planters in the boulders," Tim says sheepishly.
It's something he's wanted to do for years, and actually he started the project last year, but waited too late in the spring, and lost almost everything he transplanted from the woods. This year he began his work in January, when most of us were snuggled up by the fire and socked in for the winter. "I caught the native plants while they were still dormant, to give the roots a good chance to survive," he says.
Over the course of a mere three months, Tim has planted 56 different varieties of native plants in a series of shade gardens, rock gardens, wet gardens and sun gardens. On the edge of the tennis courts, leading into the woods, he's created lovely beds of both shade and drought tolerant plants. Tall purple Forget-Me-Nots, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Trillium, White Alum Root, Meadow Rue and native ferns look lush in the woods, despite the current drought. The wet garden is in a little bed of Canadian Violet, Yellow Mandarin, Bouncing Betty, Arrowhead Plant and Horse Balm in one of the many boulders in the woods, but this particular bed is a vast improvement. "This was a little pool packed with mosquitoes, and I just filled it in with soil and planted," Tim says.
There is a Cousa Dogwood he started from seed, a Redbud he dug up from the woods and a Carolina Silver Bell he finally succeeded in transplanting.
Tim knows every fact about every single plant, as well as its Latin name, and the most interesting thing about it. For example, the Rattlesnake Fern is one of only two ferns that originate from one stalk and not multiple fiddleheads like all other ferns. And the difference in True Jacob's Ladder and False Jacob's Ladder is the little blooms in stair steps along the leaves in the True, and a single bloom at the top in the False. He points out the sticky stuff on the stems of the Pink Catchfly explains the name.
I wish he would do a workshop on native plants, maybe even a series beginning with What Is Bouncing Betty Anyway? He's a wealth of information, and takes obvious pleasure in his job.
The woodland gardens are beautiful, but just the beginning of Tim's creation. If you walk on down the service road, you'll see more landscaping along the massive boulders under the courts, with little rock planters imbedded in them and brimming with Spiderwort and other perennials. These planters were Tim's big splurge, according to him anyway, and they all have little drainage pipes he put in.
"Oh, there are lots of little surprises tucked along the way," he says, pointing out a patch of golden Brass Buttons, or wild chrysanthemum, and later a Passionflower vine.
A wide, mulched path curves into the woods, enticing you to enter yet another wonderland of Mahonia, Black Haw Viburnum, Burr Marigold. He points out the Indian Cucumber Root, and advises it's not too tasty, 'but you could survive on it if you had to.'
Between the two soft courts is the sunny bed, and it's bursting with color already. Bee Balm, Coneflower, Oxeye Daisies, Black-eyed Susan, Tick Seed, Deptford Pinks and Larkspur all billow in the soft breeze. There's only one plant that didn't come from the Fairyland club grounds, but that's not to say he spent money on it. "That Hollyhock originated from my grandmother's, and it's 100 years old," he says.
I think Tim Hinds is a genius. His vision and knowledge and innovation make him a true inspiration.
photo by Ferris Robinson