Jo's "Little Bit of Heaven" - Jo Zane's English garden in North Carolina

Flower & Garden Magazine, May, 2000 by Tom Hewitt

English gardens are probably the last thing you would expect to find in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Sparta, North Carolina. This area, after all, is more famous for growing Christmas trees than flowers. Renowned for its incredible natural beauty, Alleghany County was once known as the "Lost Providence" because of its isolation among the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The New River, which flows just outside of Sparta, is the second oldest river in the world. Even the town itself seems suspended in time. Tucked into the northwestern corner of the state just ten miles from the Virginia border, Sparta lies just far enough off the Blue Ridge Parkway to keep its beauty a secret.

It was in this picture - postcard village two years ago that I first met Jo Zane. I was attending an evening performance of the North Carolina Symphony held at a local school. The concert was delightful, but it was the symphony of color that awaited me at the reception afterwards that really got my attention. As I entered the gymnasium, I was awestruck by several dramatic fresh flower arrangements topping the tables, each one perfectly color-coordinated to the tablecloth beneath it. "If you think these are something," someone whispered in my ear, "you should see her gardens." Unable to resist such a challenge, I waited for the crowd to thin out and finally introduced myself to an attractive woman with a melodious accent. "I really don't know how I do it," she said softly when I asked her how she planned such stunning arrangements. "I just do it."

Such modesty is typical of Jo Zane, a woman of humble beginnings. Raised on a farm in the eastern part of North Carolina, Jo grew up pulling weeds in her mother's cutting garden. "Gardening has been in my blood," she reflects, "for as long as I can remember." When she and husband Allen retired six years ago, they sold their house in Raleigh and built a modified A-frame on their 2 1/2-acre site overlooking Sparta. Their development, known as Deer Track, is an exclusive subdivision of about a dozen homes. The area is known as Air Bellows, named after the eighty-mile-an-hour winds that often whip along the peaks. "Allen and I discovered this site when we used to camp in nearby Doughten Park," Jo says. Hurricane Hugo had just come through, leveling the tulip poplars and other trees that had obstructed a view of the town and the Virginia mountains in the distance. Once they saw that view, they couldn't resist making an offer. "It seemed a fair price to pay," Jo exclaims, "for a little bit of heaven."

The ten-mile trip to Jo's gardens, climbing some eight hundred feet above the town itself, is not for the faint of heart. Twisting roads, with vegetation thick enough to form tunnels over the roadway, offer natural beauty (and sometimes danger) at every turn. Mountain laurel and pink rhododendron peek out of the woods, while black-eyed susans and sweet peas brighten the roadside. As you approach 3,800 feet, the road improves, the trees thin out, and you see the entrance to Deer Track. The first thing you notice upon approaching Jo's property is the two-hundred-foot split rail fence along the front, set off with a mixed planting that includes hundreds of orange daylilies. "It's Allen's job to prepare the beds and keep the many daylilies groomed," Jo reveals. "My job is to pick the varieties and do the actual planting." Incidentally, the rustic fence was actually brought from their home in Raleigh, as much for sentimental reasons as aesthetic ones. "It is quite nice," Jo ponders, "to have such a beautiful reminder of the gardens we left behind."

When walking towards the house, the eye is drawn to two small plantings of snapdragons on either side of the fieldstone walkway. Tall, white cleome accent the center of each bed. "The walkway and entrance plantings were actually put in before the house was finished," Jo relates. "I couldn't wait to get my hands in the dirt." A long porch fronted with rhododendrons runs the full length of the house, wrapping around the side and forming a deck that overlooks the backyard. "The place was designed," Jo says, "to give you a pretty view no matter where you sit or whichever window you look out of." The front porch is a favorite place to sit in the evenings, offering a tranquil view of a small cemetery in the distance. This is also a perfect place to watch the deer as they come out of the woods in the early evening.

Deer can be a challenge to any gardener, but it is a problem both Jo and Allen have learned to live with. "They're part of what makes this area so unique," Jo muses. "Besides, they were here first." They have solved part of their problem by installing white picket fences around the backyard and vegetable garden. They did all of the work themselves, a painfully slow but ultimately rewarding project. To keep the deer from munching on the daylilies out front, they put a single strand of white cord along the entire length of the split rail fence. "They say deer will not cross a white line," Jo says. "It must be true, because it seems to be working so far." Jo also chooses plants along the front that deer naturally avoid, including feverfew which makes them sleepy. White flowers, like feverfew, are one of her favorite accents in the garden. She uses all colors, but especially likes the bold blues of delphiniums and larkspur and the soft blue of Russian sage. She uses red sparingly in the garden. "Red flowers, like bee balm, make a wonderful accent," she adds, "but a little goes a long way." Jo is quick to state, however, that she has never seen a flower she didn't like--she uses all colors and all varieties somewhere in her gardens.