Spruill Gallery hosts garden party for the ages

Shawn Bard can grow a garden. Hope Cohn can throw a party. Put the two get together on a delightful spring evening at a farmhouse with a history that spans three centuries and what do you get? A garden party for the ages.

Shawn is a master gardener who is leading the effort to restore the garden behind the Spruill family farmhouse at the corner of Peachtree Dunwoody Road and Meadow Lane. Hope is the director of the Spruill Gallery and is co-curating with artist Lisa Tuttle an outdoor sculpture exhibit of local artists called “Site Unseen.”

The Spruill Gallery is located in the 1889 farmhouse that belonged to the Spruill family, among the original settlers of Dunwoody. The Gallery celebrated the opening of the June 10-July 23 exhibit and Phase 1 of the garden project with an evening reception last Thursday.

“Look at this!” Hope exclaimed during the reception. “Everyone’s in the garden.

“The first week of May there was nothing. Just nothing. And now we have tomatoes!”

After consulting calendars on mobile devices, Bard and Regan Maeroff-Cox, who along with other volunteers helped Bard install the garden, confirmed the start date of the project was May 5.

Indeed, there are not only tomatoes … but also sweet potatoes, radishes, dill, basil and various kinds of squash. Some of the plants were grown from seed, some were bought at the Dunwoody Community Garden plant sale and some were donated by a local men’s club. All of the produce will be donated to Malachi’s Storehouse, the Food Pantry at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church on North Peachtree Road in Dunwoody, or the Community Action Center serving Roswell and Sandy Springs.

In future phases, Hope’s thinking about having horticultural classes in the garden and enlisting Shawn to teach them. Another goal is to have picnic tables donated and placed in the garden area. Hope’s vision is that businesses could come to the garden and have lunch. Or, she said, there could be birthday parties in the garden. “It could be for anybody!” she exclaimed.

Hope’s off to a good start in promoting the garden. She estimated that more than 100 gardeners and supporters of the arts turned out for Thursday’s reception.

For her part, Shawn is already thinking about expanding the garden. High on her list is a pollinator garden in the grassy strip between the mulch pathways and parking lot.

“We’re not going to have good squash if we don’t get bugs,” Shawn pointed out. ”Squash and cucumbers really rely on pollinators. We need to get some good bees out here.” Shawn is a beekeeper, so maybe there are some hives in the garden’s future!

As a sort of back wall to the garden, she’s thinking about planting sunflowers behind the beds.

Almost as a bonus, there’s space for more beds in the garden. Shawn and Regan are thinking of installing several round beds to offset the rectangles of the current beds. It looks like Brandon Cox, Regan’s husband, and Bob Lundsten, who built the raised beds, might want to keep their toolboxes handy.

Before starting the next phase of the garden, though, there are vegetables and herbs to harvest. Shawn will lead the first harvest tonight.

A yard full of art. An outdoor party. Spring harvests. All at the old homestead. Somewhere, the Spruills must be smiling.