Juliet Henry: Houma, Louisiana

Flower & Garden Magazine, June-July, 1995 by Brent Shepherd

JULIET HENRY GARDENS OPTIMISTICALLY, AGAINST the odds and with an eye to the future. She is a novice, having succumbed to the gardening bug only a few years ago. She has a bad back that will eventually confine her to a wheelchair. And she makes her home in a part of the country whose climate is as likely to punish gardens as favor them. Juliet is undaunted, however, and in a relatively short period of time has forged a garden that turns her circumstances into virtues.

Juliet's husband, Willis, was the first to take up gardening as a hobby, involving himself in a friendly tomato-growing contest with a neighbor. After Willis' retirement, however, Juliet became more interested in the garden and Willis has since acquiesced to her newfound fervor, but not without making considerable contributions to the garden in its present form.

Knowing that their backs will eventually get the best of them (Willis shares Juliet's spinal woes), the Henrys set out to create a garden that could be tended from a wheelchair. The result is a patio garden with raised beds and an intricate underground watering system that takes most of the labor out of Juliet's new avocation.

Willis, a former oil field draftsman, applied his technical knowledge to planning the garden, drawing the patio to scale and building a model to determine the precise placement of the beds in advance. Doing so ensured a job done right the first time, crucial as the Henrys would be building the garden themselves. "It took a year to do the construction," says Juliet. "We didn't work when it was hot. We didn't work when it was cold." During that period, which lasted from February 1993 to March 1994, Willis frequently asked Juliet, "When can I retire from this retirement?"

First, the Henrys laid down sand to level off the ground and allow for better drainage. Next, they constructed box forms matching the dimensions of the raised beds and positioned them to create the skeleton of the garden. The skeleton included a timer-controlled watering system designed by the Henrys, comprising a network of heavy-duty PVC tubing leading to each bed and later capped with soaker hoses. Cement for the patio was poured around the forms, leaving the ground below the beds exposed. Finally, the Henrys placed the raised beds atop the planting holes in the hardened cement, anchoring them with comer posts driven 3 to 4 feet into the ground.

Juliet uses only packaged potting soil and soil amendments in her beds. Her lightweight mixture is a more friable alternative to the indigenous soil, the claylike "blackjack," which she says is like trying to dig hardened chewing gum. Juliet says she still doesn't know how soil is supposed to be; she just mixes hers until it looks right, combining potting soil, peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, humus, compost, bone meal and blood meal. "When I'm mixing the dirt, " she says, "it's a little bit like making jambalaya: a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I don't work from a recipe -- I guess that's the Cajun in me."

Although Juliet isn't gardening from a wheelchair yet, the patio garden is already fulfilling the purpose for which it was devised. "I have wheels -- wheels for everything," Juliet says of the scooters that bear many of her container plants, including four different gingers, two kinds of star anise, allspice and cinnamon trees. Wheels also allow her potted bamboo and banana plants to become "portable shade" for tender plants in the more exposed areas of the garden.

While Juliet and Willis were creating their future garden, Juliet also dealt with more immediate demands, namely Louisiana's unforgiving climate. Louisiana is extremely hot and humid from mid-July through September, during which time the grass grows rapidly. The Henrys mow twice a week and, according to Juliet, nobody pays attention to the one-third rule. "Here we scalp the grass and dare it to grow back," she says.

Shade becomes a valuable ally during a Louisiana summer. "Down here trees are important because of the heat," Juliet says, "but in the storm season they fall on houses." On a smaller scale, she is planting okra this year to provide shade in her herb garden. Never mind that she doesn't like to eat okra. "I don't like to eat petunias either, but they look nice," she says.

The novelty of having a particular plant, regardless of whether it is supposed to succeed in the Louisiana climate, is what compels Juliet to grow. A pineapple is the most difficult -- and perhaps the most unlikely -- thing she has grown, mainly because it had to be babied along. It was also her most surprising success but then, she remarks, "Anything I've eaten out of this garden is a surprise." That might include beets and carrots, which the Henrys eat but which Juliet interplants mainly for their ornamental appeal.

Like most Louisiana gardeners, Juliet plants her tomatoes early, to mature before the bugs, weeds and heat of summer arrive. "I usually eat my first tomatoes the week of Mothers Day," she says. One trick she has learned is not to remove the suckers from her tomato plants, which makes for a fuller, bushier plant that protects the tomatoes from sunscald. Juliet claims to harvest as many tomatoes as she would if she removed the suckers.