Marsha Greenwood Logsdon: Oxford, Indiana

Flower & Garden Magazine, June-July, 1996

MARSHA LOGSDON MIGHT object to Thomas Wolfe's notion that you can't go home again.

In the mid-1980s, on the heels of a 10-year stint teaching deaf children in and around Monterey, California, Marsha returned to Oxford, a quiet little Indiana town like the ones John Mellencamp sings about, to raise her son, Cameron, in the house where she grew up.

In this house, Marsha's parents, a home builder and a nurse, raised their three daughters with the help of two great-aunts who taught the girls a respect for nature that is evident in Marsha's garden today. "Things parents don't have time to do with their kids today, they did with us," Marsha recalls.

Marsha, now a speech and language pathology instructor in her county's school system, hadn't gardened in California but fell into it upon her return to Indiana. The garden required a lot of attention, and Marsha wasn't quite sure what she was getting herself into. "I basically went out just to clean it up," she says.

Her first year, the garden was so overgrown that only four bicolor purple irises bloomed; she didn't discover the yellow and orange-brown varieties until she started cutting and dividing. She also pulled up what she thought were weeds but instead turned out to be phlox that grew back the following year. "All I did was take the tops off because the roots were so deep, so they came back the next year," she says.

All told, the garden contained only five or six varieties of iris as well as some phlox, poppies, daylilies and peonies when Marsha started. She has since divided the irises three times and given away hundreds. Today the garden features 100 different perennials, including about 20 varieties of iris, primarily bearded irises like her favorite, 'Beverly Sills.' "It's kind of a riot of color out there. When I first started it was all violets and blues, but I've kept adding."

"I haven't had much luck purchasing irises. They're all trades," says Marsha, who trades with about a dozen people in Oxford, which has no formal garden club but a lot of very serious gardeners. "A lot of people purchase, but it's a small town, and if we have a lot of something, we share. I've had to purchase very little of what's out there."

Marsha's irises and peonies usually bloom and fade by the end of May, but color in her garden lasts until the October frost. "I have something coming up all the time, but I really enjoy the daylilies in summer," she says. About 20 varieties of day-lilies are interspersed throughout the garden. Along the back fence, a striking display of orange daylilies is offset by a stand of yellow daylilies with red throats; both stands were originally on the property. Poppies and three or four varieties of phlox also brighten the garden.

Marsha can attribute some of her success to Aunt Esther and Aunt Grace, who converted the space where the Greenwoods once raised chickens into a perennial garden. "I've had great luck," Marsha says. "The soil was fantastic from all the chickens that were back there." Starts that Marsha gets from other gardeners tend to perform better in her garden than in the donor's garden.

Marsha says she'll always view her garden as a work in progress and a constant learning experience. "It's something that I go out and change and do something different every year. It's fun to grow something you shouldn't be able to grow," she says, having once nursed back some geraniums that had spent four weeks in the trunk of a friend's car. "If you get locked into all the rules, then you lose the fun and adventure of it."

Over the last few years, part of the fun for Marsha has been getting her sister Sharon involved in gardening. Sharon's garden in Lafayette is "pretty much like mine; I've given her a bunch of starts and she's purchased a lot of plants." Sharon',s garden also helps Marsha forecast her own garden's performance; although Lafayette is only a half-hour drive from Oxford, things in Sharon's garden appear a week to 10 days before they come up in Marsha's garden.

This year Marsha turned her laundry room into a hothouse and is starting her own perennials and annuals from seed. "It's a lot cheaper," she notes. "I thought, surely I can grow these myself from seed. And they're coming up beautifully."

This year also finds Marsha's vegetable garden getting a little smaller, as she replaces her corn with annuals for cutting and drying. She'll continue to grow things like onions and green beans that can be eaten right out of the garden, as well as the strawberries and black raspberries she uses for jellies and jams.

Marsha's future plans include fencing in her garden for more privacy, and she is encouraging Cameron's interest in building things in hopes he'll build some trellises to accommodate her interest in climbing plants. At the top of her wish list, though, is the addition of a water garden consisting of a small pool and fountain. "My dad grew water lilies," she says. "We grew up with that and I'd love to have some -- they're beautifully."

"Part of the reason I garden is that I hate the Indiana winters," says Marsha, who, like most gardeners, spends the winter poring over seed catalogs and nursery catalogs, as well as occupying herself with houseplants and dried flowers. Still, these distractions aren't enough to quench her desire for springtime's first forays into the garden. "I just love being there. I feel so much at peace when I'm out there."