Feb 19 2012

A WALK THROUGH EUDORA WELTY’S GARDEN
WITH ESCAPE TO CREATE

SEASIDE, FL

            Escape To Create and Sundog Books bring Eudora Welty’s garden-inspired writings to life on Sunday, February 19^th at 4pm in Bud ‘n Alley’s Restaurant in Seaside. Author Susan Haltom will give a slide presentation of her over decade-long restoration of Welty’s ¾ acre garden and will sign copies of her national bestseller, One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place.  Rich with archival photographs, Miss Welty’s writings, and photographs by noted landscape photographer Langdon Clay, the book was sold out nationwide after Southern writer Ann Patchett praised the work on the Martha Stewart Show.

            Then a part-time employee at the Mississippi Department of Archives & History and a Ridgeland, MS garden designer, author Haltom vividly recalls the day in 1994 when she first interviewed the aging First Lady of Southern Literature in her beloved Belhaven home where she spent most of her life.  At one point in their conversation, Miss Welty sighed, “I can’t bear to look out the window and see what’s happened to my mother’s garden.”  In that moment of poignant sadness, one of the South’s most important garden restoration projects was born and Haltom began her own transformation to full-time garden preservationist and historian.