Stephanie's dream garden.

When Stephanie Smith and her husband Vick started building their new home on a woodsy hillside overlooking Big Bay Lake some twenty miles west of Hattiesburg, Stephanie could hardly wait to get out her trowel and start planting the flowery wonderland so vivid in her imagination. Even as she and Vick struggled to drag down grapevines and cut out saplings and deadwood on the overgrown two-acre tract of oak, hickory, swamp maple, dogwood, and redbud, she was seeing a less tangled landscape.

As the new house took shape, she stood behind it looking toward the lake and visualizing a shady, vine-covered pergola edged by a ferny flowerbed and, a little farther down the hill, a wonderful water garden, its lily pool gleaming with goldfish and fed by a waterfall splashing over rocky ledges. On the south side of their two-acre lot, in the filtered shade of young pine trees and dogwoods, she imagined planting azaleas, ardesia, Louisiana phlox, and creeping fig. On the north side, she and Vick could lay out a pebbled stairway to follow the steep descent of the land toward a natural gully, which they could then line with river rocks to improve drainage during rainy seasons, when it would flow like a natural stream. And tucked away under the trees she would create a special garden for her daughter, Blair Holland.

That was six years ago, when Stephanie was just twenty-one, with more energy than her delicate appearance might suggest. "I can't say I planned everything at once," she recalls, "but I do know what I want things to look like, and I just went for that look."

Today, her beautifully landscaped garden is a testament to her vision and determination.

A less talented gardener might have been daunted at the outset by the sheer hilliness of the property. Stephanie, with characteristic enthusiasm, took advantage of it. "We wanted a shady spot where we could sit to enjoy the sunsets over Big Bay Lake, so we started out with a pergola. My husband and his father built it right on the crest of the hill, and I planted wisteria to climb over the roof and surrounded it with flowers--hanging baskets of asparagus fern and verbena, masses of shasta daisies, mandevilla, and rudbeckia, and big planters of the fluffy little pink fairy rose that blooms all summer."

Gradually, with Vick's help--"He's a lawyer during the week, but a laborer on weekends!"--Stephanie transformed hillside and surrounding woodland into a stroller's delight, where shady paths winding among garden statuary and pottery planters emerge unexpectedly onto sunny flowerbeds and restful stretches of green lawn. "I like creating these separate little 'rooms' or 'islands' here and there," she explains. "I think of them as 'my little shade garden' or 'my true Southern garden' or 'Blair's bunny garden.'"

Claiming to have no patience with plants that "play out" during hot, dry weather and those not hardy enough to make it through the winter, Stephanie tries to keep color in her landscape throughout the year by choosing perennials and native species that thrive without coddling.

Most ambitious of Stephanie's projects thus far is the three-tiered water garden that lies just at the lip of the hill overlooking the lake. Lushly planted with variegated cattails, black-leaved elephant ear, water hyacinths, water clover, anacheris, and giant Victoria water lilies, the pool is home to more than forty goldfish and looks as though it has been there for years instead of just a few months. "It's definitely our most ambitious project," says Stephanie. "We originally planned it to be five feet by four, but while we had a backhoe operator out here building a retaining wall, we thought we might as well dig it a little bigger, so it ended up more like eighteen by twenty-two. We collected a whole library of information about how to build your own water garden, ordered a complete system, and did most of the installation ourselves. In all we used seven or eight pallets of boulders, flagstones, river rocks, and pea gravel. The key to the whole project is choosing the right system. Ours has a wonderful f ilter. Every two weeks or so I just lift it out and it's all full of leaves and debris. It keeps the pool crystal clear.

If the water garden is Stephanie's most impressive achievement, the little garden she created especially for her daughter is surely the most endearing. Here, nandinas and ornamental cabbage plants surround the childsized, peaked-roof playhouse built for Blair Holland by her dad. Shady paths meander under plum, apple, and pear trees, winding past statuary bunnies in whimsical poses--peeking out of the shrubbery, sniffing at blossoms, holding baskets planted with real flowers, and guarding beds of "pass-along" flowers given to Blair by Stephanie's and her own gardening friends.

Judging from her already keen interest in flowers, Blair Holland may very well grow up to be an inspired gardener, just like her mother. But she'll have a long way to go just to keep up. Stephanie is already planning her next project--a gazebo. With her artist's eye for balance and design, she visualizes it placed at the foot of the hill, right on the edge of Big Bay Lake, planted so lavishly with ornamental grasses and flowers that it would seem to have been there forever. Here, later this summer, she'll sit with her husband and daughter, enjoying the evening breeze and watching the pair of young cygnets, an Easter gift to Blair Holland, as they learn to swim on the lake like grown-up swans.

RELATED ARTICLE:

1. Mandevilla

"I mulch it with 16 inches of pine straw in winter and it comes back."

2. Verbena hybrid "Tapien"

"Blooms its heart out, even blooms in winter--evergreen"

3. Rudbeckia "Indian Summer" (below)

"Big, beautiful black-eyed Susan; blooms till frost"

4. Lantana (above)

"Any kind. It blooms forever and butterflies love it."

5. Gladiolus nanus or "Prins Claus"

"Delicate white with a pink center"

6. Shasta daisy

"Ideal for borders, great for cutting"

7. Stella de Oro daylily

"Blooms practically forever"

8. Agapanthus or "Lily of the Nile"

"Great container plants in sun or partial shade"

9. Knockout rose

"I highly recommend this for high-humidity areas--it's mildew- and disease-free."

10. Fairy rose (below)

"A tree-form rose, fluffy pink blossoms, bug-free and mildew-free"