Chuck Toney and his wife, Laura, decided to downsize after their kids grew up and left home. Chuck’s top request for his new Athens home: a south-facing backyard for the best year-round sunlight.
“I have literally been dreaming about this,” Chuck says. Four years later, and there’s a whole stretch of English cottage-inspired delight, and more than a few whimsical plant selections I hope to use in my own yard.
If you’ve read Flagpole for a while, you probably know Chuck Toney’s name. Toney held the post of speechwriter and assistant to Michael Adams, the president of the University of Georgia before Jere Morehead, for years before transitioning to executive director of the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia. These days, Chuck owns and operates C. Toney Communications, focusing on crisis communications. Laura Toney is a retired art teacher and gifted artist. She picks up a few shifts a month as a substitute and keeps her art skills sharp, painting lovely watercolors including birds and bugs found in their garden.
The Toneys have a patio with a large, impressive arch leading into the garden. Cutters felled a few trees to open up space and provide needed daylight for the garden. One impressive stump became a rustic bench in the garden by attaching a slab of wood to the remaining trunk. That’s a great trick that I’d like to use in my own garden.
The Toneys laid down garden pathways with cardboard topped by wood chips they replenish when needed. More established plants fill the space, with foliage falling into the pathways, sluicing against walkers’ legs. Chuck likes the spillage, but Laura prefers a slightly more manicured look. “Chuck likes chaos, and I like control,” Laura says with a smile. “I’m the queen of pulling up weeds.”
I like the lushness of the Toneys’ garden. Coneflowers, or echinacea, are in abundance, as are day lilies, gladiolus, rudbeckia and yarrow. There’s big buddleia, candy corn spirea, zinnias and love-in-a-mist. Around one corner there’s a mullein that looks to be 9 feet tall.
“Now, we’re in what we call the ditch garden,” Chuck says, laughing. Mullein is generally thought of as a weed, though some use it in herbal teas and tinctures. Besides the mullein, there’s one of my personal favorites, goldenrod. Blooming in late summer and early fall, it’s easy to spot growing alongside country highways. I keep a row of goldenrod between my veggie patch and the woods as a habitat for critters and a way to create a striking wall of green.
The Toneys use a garden corner for okra, tomatoes and other vegetables as well, but several plants have chunks bitten off despite enclosing wire cages. “We do fight deer,” Chuck says.
The Toneys keep most of the deer away from the main garden with unobtrusive stakes of a deer repellent. Sprays tend to dissipate too quickly and melt during rains. Though the stakes work fairly well, the deer still nosh on the garden, just farther away on the outer edges now, Chuck said.
If you’re fighting Athens deer, feel free to skip plastic bags, Irish spring soap and human urine—they don’t work. In the country, I’ve found high fences (at least 8 feet) and late-night dog patrols keep deer visitors down to acceptable levels.
The Toneys try to keep the garden as natural as possible. They stick to soil, mulch, sunlight and water, preferring to avoid pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. Around 80% of the plants in the garden are perennials, but annuals are welcome as well. Overall, Chuck prefers what he deems “Dr. Seuss plants,” wacky creations that look like they could’ve been drawn by the famous children’s book author. This includes the sea holly or eryngium—a glittery blue, spikey plant that Chuck tells me is now popular in bridal bouquets. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it, and it is well worth the Dr. Seuss label.
Generally speaking, Chuck says he picks out the plant he wants before he figures out where it’s going to go in the garden. This can lead to great finds, but it can also lead to not enough space for all the things he wants to plant. He smiles, “I am an impulsive buyer.”
“And thankfully, I’m a saver,” Laura answers.
The Toneys also have a small shade garden, a plot for raspberries and blackberries, and a corner woodland garden with azaleas, ginko and an artistic tangle of natural sticks and wood with man-made items like clothes hangers. Chuck built the irregular sculpture with bits lying around, he said. “I am fascinated by the idea of decomposition—how the environment works and how things decay,” Chuck says.
Sticks are a recurring theme in the garden. Sticks collected by Chuck and Laura on neighborhood walks form the natural borders of the garden. Chuck’s favorite knobby sticks get pride of place, upright next to the flowers. This gives the garden a different texture amongst the green summer leaves and likely adds height and interest to the garden in the winter.
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