Green thumbs are up for parish gardener

At 89, Marie Nelson is enjoying a new life as the master gardener at Sacred Heart Church in Lake George.

"If it weren't for the sun, I'd stay here all day long," Mrs. Nelson said recently, clad in a work shirt and gardening pants. "I love working here."

This is her third summer as the parish's floral guru. On most days, she walks from the nearby apartment she shares with Harold, her husband of 65 years, to tend the daylilies, coreopsis, geraniums and yarrow she has planted along the stone walls of the church, around its sign and flanking a statue of the Sacred Heart.

Putting down roots

Mrs. Nelson spent most of her career as a secretary to a pathologist at an Ohio hospital. But, while fetching samples from the lab and making sure appointments were secured, she traded garden stories and tips with the office staff, who were also green-thumbs.

When they retired, the Nelsons moved to the Adirondacks, where their son was involved with the Dippikill nature camp. They purchased land in Chestertown and built a house.

"We bought acreage just to have the garden," she recalled. "I worked there every day. I'd work and work and work, and never know what time it was."

Blooming winner

In the early 1980s, when the Nelsons attended St. Cecilia's Church in Warrensburg, Mrs. Nelson created a one-acre garden cited by the National Wildlife Federation as a "National Wildlife Backyard Habitat."

She received a silver medal in honor of her achievement and was recognized in local newspapers. The garden boasted pear, plum, cherry and apple trees, as well as such flowers as sweet william, daffodils, tulips, iris crista, sunflowers and bee balm.

Gardens that size, she said, take a lot of tending. "My blueberry bushes were over my head!" she exclaimed.

Blossoming again

When strenuous household chores became too much for the Nelsons to handle, they "retired a second time" to a Lake George apartment. Mrs. Nelson admitted it took a little time to adjust from a one-acre garden to a few flowerpots and window boxes.

Then Sacred Heart's previous pastor, Rev. Joseph O'Brien, asked for volunteers to improve the looks of the parish grounds. Mrs. Nelson was the only one to show up, and she continues her colorful contributions under the current pastor, Rev. Bernard Turner.

She often arrives at the garden in the morning, wearing a straw hat with yellow ties to protect her from the sun. She works until mid-morning and returns in the early evening when the temperature has fallen.

"I love purple coneflowers -- and geraniums; they bloom all summer," she said. "You'll have color from spring until fall. They're beautiful."

Hardy perennial

Mrs. Nelson's dream is to be able to continue to garden. But she is experiencing macular degeneration, which is slowly destroying her sight. She has already lost the capacity to see close enough to quilt (her favorite winter activity), read books and write letters.

"I want to be able to expand the garden, if I can," she said. "With my eyes, I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep it up, but I'll try! I'd like to get other people involved."

She considers herself a painter, with the grass as her canvas and the flowers as her pigments. But it's not always as easy as it looks, she said.

"People like flowers if you just put them in and they stay," she noted. "But you have to work at them in order to make them grow and have them live. And every time it rains, the weeds come up."

Sprouts

Her next project will be to help her grandson start a garden at his Hadley Lake home.

"I saw lilies buried under the grass -- it's so exciting!" she said. "Where there are gardens and they need help, that's where it's fun. And when it's finished, it's gorgeous."

(Marie Nelson is currently on a crusade against a species of invasive spiderwort that has taken up residence between the many stalks of phlox and hydrangea. She's pulled up lengths of tendrils sent out by the plant underneath the ground and laid down sheeting with mulch on top to prevent the plants from popping up where they shouldn't.)

(8/12/04)