Lookout Mountain volunteer Jimmy Campbell proudly announces the completion of a new park located on Whitt Road across from the Carter Soccer Field in Lookout Mountain, Ga. A beautiful, shaded path connects the garden to Fairyland Elementary School and has been named “The Jimmy Campbell Connector Trail.” 
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Planning for the garden began in 2020 when the city received a grant from the Riverview Foundation to develop the one-acre plot. Mr. Campbell and Lookout Mountain, Ga., city manager Kenny Lee spearheaded the grant requests and then formed a planning committee made up of representatives of local garden clubs and the local Bee City USA committee chairs. Meeting off and on during the pandemic, Denise Taylor and Lulu Brock represented the Garden Club of Lookout Mountain, which donated $5,000 for the purchase of perennials. Penny Simmons represented the Lookout Mountain Beautiful Garden Club, which donated 1,000 bulbs for the garden. Laurelwood Garden Club, represented by Chrissy Jones, donated $100 to help develop the garden. Candace Wells and I, Bee City USA advocates, helped by creating a list of native plants indigenous to the Cumberland Plateau to attract birds, bees, and butterflies to the garden.

Dennis Bishop, owner of Going-Native Landscape, was hired to clear the area of invasive plants, design the garden, and oversee the purchase of plants. A water source was added to ensure the sustainability of the plants. Over 150 trees and shrubs were planted in November of 2020 and over 2,500 perennials were planted in May and June of 2021. More plants will be added later this fall.

Stone paths and seating areas with beautiful teak benches were installed for residents to pause and enjoy the lush, colorful, woodland setting. Mountain stone borders beds of echinacea, rudbeckia, milkweed and other pollinator-friendly perennials. Many species of native bees, as well butterflies such as monarchs and swallowtails, are finding a home in these new beds. Butterfly host plants are an important part of the garden so butterflies can complete their life cycle. 

Plant identification signs will be added to let visitors know what plants are beneficial to pollinators and birds. The Fairy Trail Garden adds one acre, or 43,560 square feet, of pollinator habitat to the mountain! What an amazing gift to support and sustain our bees, butterflies, and birds. As an advocate for pollinators on Lookout, I am very thankful for Jimmy Campbell, Kenny Lee, and the committee of mountain residents for this contribution in conserving this invaluable group of insects and birds. Mr. Campbell points out, “Even though this garden is on the Georgia side, it is a garden to be enjoyed by all the residents on Lookout Mountain.”

More good news is that the committee is under budget and has about $10,000 to further enhance the garden’s footprint on Lookout. For more information and plant lists, contact Ann Brown at brownw01@yahoo.com. 

by Ann Brown

Once upon a time there was a professor who lived a good, long life on Lookout Mountain, eventually moving to Signal Mountain. He will go unnamed to protect the innocent and the guilty. As a young teacher at the McCallie School, he taught English literature and the art of weight lifting. As an English professor at UTC, he taught the glories of Shakespeare, which he frequently embellished with colorful language and bawdy anecdotes. His flair for the dramatic lifted and energized the Holy Scriptures when it was his appointed time for the liturgical readings at his beloved Church of the Good Shepherd. 

Some of you may have guessed who this legend might be, but I wonder if you’ve ever heard this story. On one of his journeys to England, the professor had occasion to visit the Shakespeare garden in Oxford, where, with stealth and cunning, he snipped several stems of mint. From thence he proceeded to smuggle the purloined mint through United States customs to be planted in his own garden on Lookout Mountain. 

Being a generous good fellow, the professor shared the bounty of his garden with his brother-in-law Rolph Landry. (Now, can you guess the culprit of this story?) The English mint moved in a pot from the Landry home on East Brow to its present home in Black Creek. My friend Rolph, also a generous good fellow, shared some of the Shakespeare mint with me. After it had rooted and was flourishing in my garden, I espied, by chance, a director of this mountain tabloid purchasing mint at a local nursery this spring. I offered to share some of my English mint with her, promising that her writers would find inspiration from the magical herb.

And so it goes, the wandering mint spreads its fresh summer fragrance around the world and beyond the statutes of limitations for thievery and smuggling. May it continue to bless our Southern sweet teas, our Derby Day juleps, Rolph’s gin gimlets, and my Sunday morning mimosas as we worship online at “kitchen church” during the present plague.

Here’s an interesting footnote from the New Yorker, May 7, 2020:

Shakespeare lived his entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague. On April 26, 1564, in the parish register of Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon-Avon, the vicar, John Bretchgirdle, recorded the baptism of one “Gulielmus Filius Johannes Shakspere.” A few months later, in the same register, the vicar noted the death of Oliver Gunne, an apprentice weaver, and in the margins next to that entry scribbled the words “hic incipit pestis” (here begins the plague). On that occasion, the epidemic took the lives of around a fifth of the town’s population. By good fortune, it spared the life of the infant William Shakespeare and his family.
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by Wiki Carter