Clyde Moore: Backyard paradises

We’re each born with innate skills and talents we discover over a lifetime. Sometimes you’re still discovering them much beyond the time you’d expect. I’ve always enjoyed gardening; but, that’s likely not among mine. I have it confirmed when I visit my mother in North Carolina. I’ll remark about a plant, wonder where she got it and learn it was on a trip to visit me, a small plant she purchased in my company, now a virtual bush I do not recognize.

When we first moved to Florida I discovered bromeliads and orchids, and they have since been my low maintenance favorites. Of late I find myself hanging out in local gardens, enjoying the green thumbs of others.

Last spring I attended the ‘Paint Out’ party at the Albin Polasek Museum & Gardens and have been taken with the whole environment since. That evening I met Jane, a British snowbird who lives in Winter Park much of the year and volunteers in the gardens at the Polasek. Jane introduced me to Pam Paisley, who heads the Polasek’s volunteer gardening troops.

I hadn’t seen Pam since, as I joined her for a personal tour last Friday. It was a treat. Pam’s passion for the gardens, and knowledge of the museum, makes her an ideal guide. She shares not just one perspective, but seems to cover all bases with equal enthusiasm.

Her first experience with the Polasek was viewing it from the water during a Winter Park boat tour. She saw the crucifix sculpture in back and thought she’d heard the guide say it was a convent. “Landscapes are not static,” she said, acknowledging early gardening lessons, as we began. “Unlike paintings that we do of landscapes – and new gardeners are like, ‘oh, I want it to look just like this’ – it’s never going to look exactly like this again.”

“I’ve always had an appreciation of gardens,” she says, though early on it was merely an aspiration. “I’ve always made the horrendous mistake of buying houses with exquisite gardens,” she shares, explaining when she and her husband lived in Auckland, New Zealand, they owned an 1865 miner’s cottage previously owned by the editor of New Zealand Home & Garden. “And,” she says, “by God I wasn’t going to be the American who let her garden go to pot.”

To tend the 3.5-acre property, she now oversees approximately 15 volunteers, with at least one in her 90s, and calls those in their 40s young, to my delight. “We’ve gotten to be such a close group, and most of us have been together for five or six years now,” she says. “We’re really one of the most flexible volunteer organizations you’d ever want to belong to. They come and do what they can do. Nobody is ever going to say, oh, you can’t come because you can’t do something. Just come and sit on a bench and amuse us while we’re working is cool by us.”

A few volunteers focus on specific plants, she says, noting they are only interested in native species. “These exotics drive them nuts, so we gave them a little corner to make a native plant garden,” she says. “We do pretty well maintaining it with the group that we have, but if we had twice as many people it would be twice as gorgeous.”

As we walk, she talks of future plans, and how the art and the landscape relate. “Most of Polasek’s pieces were meant to be viewed from 360 degrees, but that one was not,” she says referring to a piece titled “Holy Family” on a pedestal. “So we see the back of this ugly pedestal. That will be moved into a better position for it. ‘Man Reaching for the Moon’ will probably come down the hill to a place where he’s less concealed. And he’s a wonderful story. He’s sort of the bookend to ‘Man Carving His Own Destiny.’ That was Polasek’s patriotic piece when Kennedy announced we were going to go to the moon. This was his way of saying thank you.”

I ask about a piece I’d seen days earlier, a girl with a goose along a side fence. “‘Oh, ‘Lisa and the Goose.’ She’s charming. Charming,” she effuses. “‘Lisa and the Goose’ will move into a position that will make her more visible. In our future planning we’d like to move ‘Eternal Moment’ – which is the couple embracing – we’d like to do sort of a wedding photo-op place, probably down closer to the lake.”

Her take on plants is mostly enthusiastic, that is until I mention a clover weed with purple flowers I found in my backyard, thought was pretty and photographed. Soon after she notices one and grimaces. She speaks of her own desire for perfection as being the most frustrating part of her role here. We walk by the crucifix statue and she refers to the agave Americana – a large, sculptural, variegated plant – as she speaks of the plants that fight back. Red roses used to be planted here, signifying the blood of Christ, but led to bloody volunteers instead, and no one wanted to prune them.

We laugh a lot as we walk and she obviously enjoys the role of tour guide. “Yes, I love to give tours,” she says. “On our website I have a little announcement that I will give tours Tuesday mornings at 10:30. It’s been on the website for a year. The other day a family came and they were like ‘We don’t want to miss the tour!’ I said ‘Don’t worry, you are the first people who have asked me to do a tour in months.’ I love to do the tours because I’m passionate about the place, the story, the art and the setting.”

“I get tremendous satisfaction for being here, being around the art. It’s the most gorgeous setting in Central Florida,” she declares. I ask if she’s prejudiced. “No. Not at all. I’m very objective.” And we laugh.