A personal retreat: a Grenada garden blooms in family bustle and quiet solitude.

Sue Brannan's children and grandchildren are always eager to buy her something pretty for the garden every birthday and Mother's Day.

What she really wants is something quite plain.

"I always tell them, 'I'd just like a load of mulch,'" says the Grenada gardener, who has spent so many years nurturing the flowers of her outdoor oasis that she feels like they're her children, too.

From the pink zinnias growing up from seeds in patio pots to the "New Dawn" rose tumbling over the gazebo, this is a garden designed on a human scale. Blooms stretch across the seasons, linking spring to summer to fall. Meanwhile, both the work and play that take place here link one generation to another.

It's been more than 40 years now since Sue and her husband, Dan, built their home in the Grenada Country Club neighborhood in the mid-1960s. Originally from southeast Tennessee, the couple settled in north Mississippi through Dan's work with a wheel-cover manufacturing facility in Grenada.

In the beginning, their landscape of nearly an acre was utterly bare-stripped clean of trees, brush, and any precious topsoil. The aspiring gardener stepped out to meet a yard of unwelcoming clay.

As she got to work establishing her landscape, Sue called on the expertise of her brother-in-law, Horace "Bud" Brannan, who owned a florist shop and greenhouse in Winchester, Tennessee. Although he is now retired from the plant business, the two of them continue to collaborate through regular Saturday morning phone calls.

"He taught me how to test my soil and build up the beds," Sue says. "He's been my inspiration."

In the early years, Sue was also glad to accept help from a Mississippi State University student charged with creating a landscape plan for class credit. His design called for an elaborate Oriental garden--which Sue didn't undertake--and for planting river birch trees in the backyard, which she did.

Their mature height today is testament to farsighted planting, and Sue held onto that original plan over the years to glean ideas.

"It was a major project, and to do the entire thing would have been very expensive," she says. "But I'm sure he got a good grade on it."

From its bare beginnings, the Brannans' landscape has evolved alongside Sue's own gardening knowledge, her preferences, and the occasional whim.

"My husband says, 'When I die, she's going to dig me up and move me who knows where,'" Sue laughs. "'She'll never be satisfied.'"

Over the years, the backyard privacy hedge was replaced by a fence, and the vegetable garden was repurposed to showcase varieties of roses. When her mother died, Sue also brought many of her plants down from Belvidere, Tennessee, to serve as a living memory.

Along with the changes, there have been many constants, too--like the bulbs and perennials that come back every year as the backbone of her garden, and the poppies from which she saves seeds to resow year after year.

It was when Sue retired from her career in hairdressing in the 1980s that gardening took on a new emphasis in her life. With more time at home, she came to cherish the outdoor environment beyond her back door.

"I like to come out here in the morning in my pajamas with a cup of coffee, and I may come in at 2 o'clock," she says. "I'm just in my own little world."

Shortly after retirement, she joined the 50-member Grenada Garden Club, where she was delighted to find both new friendships and new avenues for channeling fresh ideas into her own landscape. She also tried out her skills at arranging, winning the Tricolor Award with her first entry in the Grenada Flower Show in 1999.

"In the garden club, we learn from each other," she says. "And going to the design shows has been a real help."

Sue also drew inspiration from a water garden created by Stephanie Smith of Hattiesburg, featured in the July/August 2002 issue of Mississippi Magazine.

"Just like Stephanie, I call it my dream garden," she says. "I'm always dreaming up some new project."

One such project began innocently enough a dozen years ago with a Little Giant pump kit that her daughter, Brenda, gave her as a Mother's Day present. Then her husband came home to find the garden hose laid out in a kidney shape beside the patio. It could only mean one thing.

"He said, 'You are not digging a hole in this yard!'" Sue laughs.

Despite that initial hesitation, the water garden has turned out to be a favorite centerpiece in the backyard landscape. The rippling water drowns out any noise in the neighborhood, lending an atmosphere both comforting and secluded.

"This garden has been therapy for me--a place to meditate and to enjoy nature," Sue says.

The pond has also been an attraction for the Brannans' four grandchildren, who made a game of scooping up young goldfish and carrying them across the street to a pond on the country club property.

To the ordinary goldfish that were her initial residents, Sue later added exotic koi fish to the pond. Blue Louisiana iris, yellow flag lilies, and cannas have their place around the rock-rimmed water. Inspired by the Smith garden in Hattiesburg, Sue's addition of a waterfall cascading down the rocks was a crowning touch.

More careful about physical labor today at 75 than she once was, Sue now looks to her 11-year-old grandson, Drew, for help with garden tasks that involve lifting or climbing. She's hoping he'll catch her gardening enthusiasm--just like her horticulturist brother-in-law did from his grandmother.

With her grandchildren and four great--grandchildren in mind, Sue's next project is a little outdoor grill near the gazebo for the children to roast marshmallows. Sharing cut flowers from her garden with friends who are sick remains a priority, and she also looks forward to staying active in gardening organizations.

"You meet the nicest friends through gardening," she says. "And anyway, I'd rather do this than play bridge."