Stopping to smell the flowers
Getting the garden in shape
Arlene Marturano

Arlene Marturano is a master gardener, writer, and educator. As an advocate of gardening as a tool for learning, she helped develop the Carolina Children's Garden at the Sandhill Research and Education Center. She is an education consultant with T.E.A.C.H. marturano@yahoo.com

So many of the beloved plants in southern gardens originated in Japan - the camellia, kerria, hydrangea, holly, quince, boxwood, rose of Sharon, azalea, and loquat to name a few. So it is no surprise Okinawa native, Yone Jackson, feels at home with nature in her Columbia garden.

Jackson brings a unique skill to plants through the art of topiary by creating living sculptures from azaleas, boxwood, camellias, and hollies.

A 16- inch trimmer crafts the main shapes and once a week, during the growing season, Jackson touches up her work with a mini- trimmer.

Large boxwood birds decorate the front and side of her home. A mother and baby birds play in a large backyard bed of vinca, roses, hibiscus, petunias, althea, and loquat.

On trips to Okinawa, Jackson brings seeds back to test here. A species of tan- gerine grown only in Okinawa is 12 feet tall in Jackson's backyard and produces an abundance of yellow- orange tart, sweet fruit.

The easy to grow bitter melon vine yields a knobby green vegetable, which is sliced and used in stir fry recipes.

The tropical shell ginger, Alpinia zerumbet, thrives beneath banana trees. The leaf is used for wrapping foods like rice cakes. A fragrant herbal tea is made from its leaves.

A variety of fruit trees besides the loquat and tangerine bring generous harvests. The excess from three figs goes into the freezer.

Jackson drapes plastic snakes in the fig trees to deter mockingbirds, but they scare more humans than birds. A "pearadise" is heavy laden with hundreds of sweet firm pears. The cold spell in April may have been the cause of no fruit on a usually fruitful peach.

For 25 years, Jackson grew large beds of Jackson and Perkins hybrid roses and entered them in rose shows and the State Fair.

Yone Jackson stands in front of some her artwork.

The high maintenance of the collection made her reduce the size of the rose beds and increase use of bulbs, annuals, and perennials.

The mixed beds now include canna, calla, crinum, and spider lilies, hibiscus, cleome, zinnia, chrysanthemum, peony, dahlia, and phlox with the remaining roses.

The front entranceway to Jackson's home and interior kitchen and dining room windows feature the tallest sanseveria, which is also known as snake plant.

"In Okinawa we call them a good luck plant. They keep the air clean in the house," Jackson said.

Yone Jackson shaped boxwood birds in front of her house.

The large maple shade tree in Jackson's backyard was a twig when it was planted in 1979 to commemorate Jackson's mother coming to visit from Japan. They call it the Memory Tree.

A Japanese lantern and statues of Japanese cranes sit in its shade. Bird houses made by Jackson's husband, Henry, hang from its branches.

Yone Jackson has a knack for making plants feel at home in their surroundings just as she has become in hers. Jackson has what it takes to get a garden in shape.