Pam Sigman

I’ve often wondered if maybe there is a genetic influence in the love of gardening. I think there might be.

My grandmother gave a presentation to her garden club in Tyler in about 1952 about her grandmother’s garden. Her grandmother’s house (my great-great grandmother) sat on the corner of Bonner and Fan Street (now called Woldert Street). My mother remembers it as a sprawling house with a packed dirt yard that was swept with a broom every day.

Here are some excerpts from that presentation describing gardening in 1900s Tyler:

When I first remember the garden, there were no cars, no paved streets, no street lights and no stock laws in Tyler. Everybody had a fence to keep out the neighbors’ cows and chickens. This grandmother of mine knew that a garden was not made by saying “oh, how beautiful” and sitting in the shade, but that it took constant, hard work to make flowers grow and keep out the weeds. There was no particular pattern to their garden.

They (my great-great grandmother and her widowed sister who lived with her) had planted a row of cedar trees across the front of their place and from the front gate to the house on either side of a wide gravel walk. I remember the trees were quite tall and in between the cedars there were violets, pansies, paper-white narcissus, jonquils, candytuff, nasturtiums and sweet alyssum. Occasionally one of the huge old forest trees in the back lot would die and have to be cut down to be used as firewood in the nine fireplaces and grandmother would save the stump to hold pots or make a seesaw for her great grandchildren.

Yes, there was a pit and through the windows in the winter, you could always find something in bloom. In the spring out came plumbago, huge banana plants, geraniums, hibiscus, ponderosa, lemons, begonias – oh, everything – and all kinds of seeds just sprouting, ready to go in the ground. The front porch was “l” shaped. On one end grew the loveliest running roses; at the other end were steps leading to the pergola also rose covered. There were trellises in front of the windows all around the house covered in morning glories, moon vines, white clematis, coral vine, honeysuckle, gourd vines and running roses. Cape jasmines, roses, lilies of all kinds, tuberoses, golden glow, poppies, vincas, peonies and on and on. At night there was a big grey-green leafed bush that bloomed out in big white flowers that always smelled so good. There were four o’clocks all over the front yard. The grandchildren’s favorite place was the scuppernong arbor housing our playhouses. She also had plenty of sunflowers planted for the chickens.

One day I went through the back lot to grandmother’s little store on the corner of Front and Bonner and there was the prettiest hollyhock plant, so thinking it had just volunteered, I dug it up and took it home and planted it. Grandmother came by and admired it. She said, “Do you know, I planted a whole row of hollyhocks in the back lot but had no luck, not one of then came up!” I didn’t say a word!

One wet spring morning as grandmother was getting flowers out of the pit, she slipped and fell in. We thought she was broken all to pieces; she wouldn’t let anybody touch her. We carried her hot water to soak her ankle and liniment for the scratches. At noon, she made us bring down a bridge table and chair. The cook made a good lunch. Grandmother ate but was still to hurt to be brought into the house. As the night time came, she finally allowed the yard man to help her out of the pit and into the house. Bright and early the next morning, she was out in the garden again, humming as she worked.

On winter days when it was too cold to work outside, grandmother and auntie poured over the dozens of seed catalogs, ooh’ing and aah’ing over every plant. Seeds were much less expensive then but their orders were still about $50!

After working in the yard all day, grandmother loved to get dressed and sit on the front porch, enjoying her flowers, the birds that were there by the dozens, the butterflies, the bees, the humming birds and sometimes an old hen and her chickens scratching about. Company nearly always dropped in as she sat on her porch. Sometimes she would invite the grandchildren over for tea cakes and lemonade – she was really a good cook as well as a good gardener.