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I'm in Beaufort,
South Carolina in a downtown tropical paradise.
I'm speaking with Linda Peters. And we are in her
five acre garden, which she and nature have made.
Linda, thank you for letting us come. You grew
up with farmer's daughter, I believe. I did and I
loved every second of it. but it wasn't a place
where you go tropical no it was a dairy farm we
had a hundred acre dairy farm and we milk the cows
and corn and wheat and that sort of thing.
You came to Beaufort and you were educated as a
Montessori teacher. And so I think this garden and
property serve two purposes. It was your home,
your school and your creation.
Home schooling what I love to do. What age children
did you have? Three to six year olds. And how many
did you have? 20 every year. Well and we start right
here where we are, with something that's very
child size. And lots of people use them. And I
think it's like a little fairy land. It's our
little fairy garden. Yes the wagon my husband
found. It's an antique wagon. When he brought it
home, he said do something with it
Oh that'll make
a great little fairy garden. So he fixed it and put soil in
and then the moss and stuff
and add the little fairies and of course
the little miniature turtles and lizards
and things and then we made a beautiful fairy garden.
And for mothers and grandmothers and fathers and grandfathers,
how does that help children develop their
minds in a nontraditional teaching and looking in a
book way? Well we have a lot of vocabulary in
there, a lot of colors and
different creatures and moss. And we get
mushrooms in there. And they love to walk around
because there are different things on every side.
For them it's like the perfect vantage point for
them because they can just look in it's right
there at their eye level. It was wonderful for them.
I'm sure it was. As we move back into the woods
what's one of the first fun little areas that we
encounter? Well we have, the
first maybe fun area is the
prehistoric lane, where I have a lot of
dinosaurs hidden and tropical like plants and
I have a dinosaur and that I made out of
concrete. And we have a pterodactyl that flies in
the sky and the mother dinosaur,
she's a topiary, with a big red bow and
the children love. That might be their
favorite area just because they love
dinosaurs. And of course there again a
teaching spot because which
dinosaurs are meat eaters? And what about their
body allows them to do that? How can you tell
this is a prey animal? Yes. All the names they love
the names of the dinosaurs. Yeah, which is wonderful from
so many ways to learn to pronounce things. That just
trains your tongue and helps your memory as well.
So survived getting through the dinosaurs.
(laughs)
And we now go on to another section of the
garden. We pass through the orchids and then we
went to the fish pond, a Koi pond.
Which is pretty large and I have
some really large Koi in there. And you said that
it's fun because we all have different
topics to study. And so we walked back there and
here are these enormous fish. And you feed them
probably more than you feed yourself and your
husband. My husband would say they
definitely get fed more than he does.
(laughs)
And yes we do and we so study fish
We go out and actually one day it was sometime
in summer school and I said okay children take off your
shoes and they said, 'Oh Oh!' So they did and I
let them all sit on the edge with their feet in the
water. One little girl looked at me and said
This is the best day of my life. Wonderful.
Yeah. It was beautiful. As we move on and out,
what's the next area that the children are gonna
be fascinated by? I've been fascinated by every place
you took me today. After the pond we went by the
peacocks and the chickens. The children always love
to see the animals. They love the animals. And you've got
chicken sitting by you right now with you. Yes I do.
And also in that, with the peacocks and chickens
you have somebody came hear unexpectedly.
A Lillie Egypt goose. Lucy the Loose.
And she just flew in. She looked real happy this morning.
She's very happy. She has the new flight feathers.
Well and surrounding us now
you've got those wonderful groves of
clumping bamboo and I can hear a lot of happy birds
in those. Yes the redwing blackbirds
especially right now. They love that bamboo. And they
stay pretty good for a long time actually.
You like to make things in your spare time...
(laughs)
but, you're good at it. You use these allocacia
colacacia leaves and cast them. I do.
I have a table out of there we passed by and I put
the sand on and the leaf on upside down and then I
mix up the concrete and I found the concrete on and then
leave it there for a few days and tip it and
then it makes a beautiful bird bath or whatever you
want. In the bog garden, I guess do bullfrogs and
all use that for habitat? Absolutely, we have
so many frogs and bullfrogs and toads and
everything loves that garden. But you even got roses.
I do. I have a rose garden. Well, right now it's a
salvia garden because a salvia always thinks over.
But I did grow amazing roses. And of course,
salvia like many of the plants you have, is
attracted to the pollinators and insects. That's why
it's there. The bees and hummingbirds,
they love it. and butterflies. So that's
why they're there. As a dairy farmer's daughter,
you have to have some cows, but I think you've
got em little smaller. We do, we have a
little miniature garden with a miniature houses
and miniature animals and miniature cows, miniature
pigs and little paths and a little pond that
I made out of concrete. So your students
probably know that milk and eggs aren't manufactured
in the back of the store? I imagine this was part of
their learning experience. Definitely. When we
had all the citrus trees, when the
oranges are ready I say let's go harvesting.
We take the ladder and the wagon. We
fill it up. We come and make orange juice. Whatever
with our lemon, we're going to make
a lemon pie. Whatever would bloom that week,
we do it. You do have some beautiful citrus. What are
some of the things that you're going back there?
We have some calamondins and comprods. And then we
have a few orange trees. And we have that
lemon that you love, that ponderosa lemon.
It's enormous. It has to have its own
little table to hold it up. I've actually had it
break that branches because it's so large and
heavy. And then you've got a swing tree. We have a
swinging tree with several swings on it. There's
nothing more beautiful than seeing a group of
children swinging on the tree. And then I was
getting a little tired and needed a place to sit
down and I found some friends who looked like
they had been tired a long time ago. They did.
It's Jack and Jill, the skeletons.
They're waiting for people to come by and
there sign said we've been waiting a long time.
One of my favorite native plants is sparkleberry
Nexium. And you have sparkle berry lane and
it's even more sparkly than normal. Yes we have
danglers that we got out of an ad in the
newspaper and we hung all the danglers
and the children love it. And then we kind
of end up our wonderful walk through the garden with a
festival coming back to the house. Well those
magazines. I saw a Mardi Gras tree in a magazines so
we gotta have a Mardi Gras tree so we,
I chose the tree and then we got a
ton of beads and everybody that's been
here has thrown some beads in to the tree.
It's great fun. And then we're so now we're back
at what had been the playground for the
children. And I imagine that in the coming years
since the children will be coming back to the visit of
course. They always come back and visit but this
is now another space and I imagine that things
will start happening here. I may.
Linda Peters what a wonderful opportunity
and head start to life you gave children and to
have children who are going to remember this
joyful experience of nature. And I bet you've
made a contribution to the environmental leaders
of the future. I actually know I have.
A lot of them. Thank you very much and my pleasure.