Louisiana TIMEPIECE

Off a winding Louisiana road, down an allée of spindly oaks, past an ancient split-cypress fence, grows a garden. There, Jack Holden points his pruning shears at the privet hedge lining a path, lilies springing as they please, and ferns seeking pockets of dappled light. “Here is my favorite, this rose,” Jack says, waving his clippers toward a tangle of vines and giant blushing flowers. Creole gardeners in the mid-1800s, he explains, cherished the Duchesse de Brabant rose, too. “I find plants in old neighborhoods, along country roads, and bring them back here.”

At each turn in this Eden lies another note of beauty, history, and delight, the funky, fruity smell of flowers swirling all around. Attempting to take everything in almost overloads the senses, and Jack’s wife of nearly sixty years, Pat, offers a solution. “This garden,” she says, guiding the way up to the porch, “is meant to be seen from above.” Viewed from atop, the plot rolls out into organized swaths