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Lifestyle

Beautiful, Blossoming Spring Gardens!

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“The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.”–Thomas More

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There’s a pure beauty about flower gardens that lifts and enlarges the spirit, stirs the imagination and delights the senses.

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Perhaps that is why, about this time of year, my heart sings as the daffodils and tulips begin to appear. After months of a cold, barren ground that lay dormant through a harsh winter, it’s pure therapy for me to get my hands back into the soil and begin planting again.

As spring arrives and I prepare to once again to don my gardening gloves, there is no place more inspirational for me and my family to visit than Sarah Duke Gardens in Durham, N.C., 55 acres of botanical gardens on the campus of Duke University. The gardens, which were both financed and designed by women, are just adjacent to the famous Duke Chapel.

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Sarah Duke, wife of Duke University benefactor Benjamin Duke, gave $20,000 in 1934 to finance the planting of over 100 flower beds consisting of some 40,000 irises, 25,000 daffodils, 10,000 small bulbs and assorted annuals. After heavy rains destroyed the original gardens a year later, the gardens as they currently exist were created by Ellen Biddle Shipman, a pioneer in American landscape design.

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Considered by many to be her greatest work, she designed them in the Italianate Terrace style.

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In the middle of the gardens, the following quote by Francis Bacon is inscribed on a large stone marker:

“God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.”

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Several lily ponds, Monet-like bridges and water-side stepping stones add to the allure.

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An afternoon spent at Sarah Duke Gardens makes it easy to understand why Rumer Godden said, “A garden isn’t meant to be useful. It’s for joy.”

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As the poem goes:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

than anyplace else on earth.

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Photos from Sarah Duke Gardens website, by Ildar Sagdejev or by Chan Shaver.

Kim Darden Shaver

for

Leslie Hendrix Wood

Founder,
Editor In Chief

Hadley Court

Decorator
Chancellor Interiors
Midland, Texas

Gracious Living. Timeless Design. Family Traditions.

~~~

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About Leslie Hendrix Wood

Leslie Hendrix Wood is the founding editor of the luxury lifestyle and design blog, Hadley Court and an has her own interior design firm, Leslie Hendrix Wood Interiors in Midland, Texas.

Leslie received her undergraduate degree in business. She worked briefly in banking and returned to school to earn her MBA.

Upon graduation, she moved to Washington D.C. to work on a Presidential campaign and received a Presidential appointment to a position in International Trade.

At the end of the administration, Leslie returned to her hometown and joined the family oil and gas business, although her first passion has always been, after raising her children with her husband, business and interior design.

When she saw her children were closer to leaving home, she decided to start the blog, Hadley Court. in 2012, which won the Design Bloggers Conference Hall of Fame award for Best New Design Blog in 2013 - a prestigious honor granted by her peers.

In 2014, she is, in addition to blogging, beginning to build the family friendly luxury lifestyle brand: HADLEY COURT, based on her values of Gracious Living, Timeless Design and Family Traditions.

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Hadley Court is my family’s summer home where I spent my summers as a child. Every day at Hadley Court was a celebration of fine living.
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