Photo Credit: Barbette Houser

Marianne Happek with a rose given to her by Jeremy Ayers from his garden.

The tour started at the historic T.R.R. Cobb House. With its neatly trimmed boxwood hedges, tidy red brick garden paths, and genteel iron garden furniture with a rusty veneer whispering of tradition, it was an elegant beginning to the Boulevard Gardening Club’s Roving Garden Party. But this wasn’t your average garden tour.

“It’s really about yards and gardening, instead of gardening with a capital ‘G’,”  explained Cassie Drennon Bryant, one of the organizers. Billed as “more of a party than a traditional garden tour,” the event featured the studio of painter June Ball, the garden of photographer Jeremy Ayers, and the homes, gardens and art collections of Liz and Tony DeMarco and Betsy and Blair Dorminey.

Photo Credit: Barbette Houser

Krysia Haag, Charlie Hartness and Nancy Hartness in June Ball's studio.

Women broke out their linen dresses and big straw hats for the occasion which took place on Sunday in the Cobbham neighborhood. Happily, the weather was ideal. Guests sipped Pimm’s cups at one stop and a loaded watermelon punch at another. Over cucumber tea sandwiches and other Southern party staples, discussions included gardening tips, local history and who was playing where and when in downtown Athens this spring. 

June Ball’s studio on N. Pope Street held stacks of large abstract canvases for visitors to thumb through. The walls were covered with her landscapes. This eco-minded gardener with luminous blue eyes explores natural vistas in her travels, including numerous trips to Cortona and Great Britain. “Whether it is a landscape or an abstract, I always set a horizon line and go from there.” Her painted gardens set the stage for what was to come.

Around the corner, Liz and Tony DeMarco’s house brimmed with work by local artists. A favorite with visitors that day, according to one docent, was a landscape by Matt Alston framed above an antique daybed. The painting overlooks their simple garden, where a playscape towers over hellebores, cast iron plant and a Japanese maple—providing evidence of the young family inhabiting the old house built in 1896.

Photo Credit: Barbette Houser

The art-filled kitchen of Betsy and Blair Dorminey.

In the spacious foyer, with its beautifully worn antique bokhara rugs, a Terry Rowlett painting commanded attention. Scott Spillane of the band Neutral Milk Hotel was the model for Rowlett’s “The Ecstasy of Saint Bernard.” In this large canvas a sleeping monk is depicted along with a box of Ritz crackers, a webbed lawn chair, a thermos of coffee, a skull and half-burned candles.

A few doors down, guests lounged in comfy wicker furniture on the front porch of Betsy and Blair  Dorminey’s house. The exterior is framed by massive deodar cedars which were probably planted when Dr. A.C. Holliday built the home in 1901. The Dormineys are the second family to reside there and purchased it from Holliday’s then 102-year-old daughter, Kate, who had moved in at age 9. Three paintings by Kate’s sister Annie May, who taught at UGA, remain in the home.

The kitchen is rumored to have once been an operating room. 

With its soaring ceilings and generous wall space, the house is well suited for displaying art, and the Dormineys have taken full advantage of that. Their collection contains many paintings by Andy Cherewick and Terry Rowlett; other artists in it include Charles Ladson, Jim Herbert and Michael Lachowski. About her appreciation for the work of Cherewick and Rowlett, Betsy Dorminey says, “I love them both, but they’re very different. Their style is different; their way of thinking is different.”

In the backyard, time seems to shift. Mulched paths among beds of irises lead to an old barn and a chicken coop original to the property. You feel as if you are in another world, and tension seems to melt away. A little wooden gate leads from there to the garden of Jeremy Ayers.

Photo Credit: Barbette Houser

The chicken coop is original to the Dorminey's property and lends it a timeless feel.

Ayers’ property may be the most “garden-like” of those on the tour. The artist has crafted a series of paths surrounding beds of herbs, perennials and flowers edged in large smooth, round stones. According to Cassie Bryant, “You see a path and you want to go down it to see where you end up. He creates a sense of mystery and wonderment.”

Photo Credit: Barbette Houser

Unusual chairs in the garden of Jeremy Ayers provide a unique perspective.

Seats are placed in little nooks for visitors to share a conversation and the view. A focal point is a pair of extremely high chairs with ladder-like rungs you must climb to get into. They were built by Don Young out of locally cut and milled cedar. From here, you can see the entire garden and beyond. 

They are fun and unusual, like the Boulevard Gardening Club’s Roving Garden Party.