Cookeville?s Pilot Club offers Garden Tours

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON News Editor for the Southern Standard

Rock Haven, designed by DeKalb County native Rosemary Pedigo Ponte, will be featured in the Pilot Club of Cookeville?s 2006 Garden Tour which will be held on June 11, from 1-5 p.m.

The Pilot Club of Cookeville will hold its 2006 Garden Tour on June 11, from 1-5 p.m. The tour will feature four beautifully designed and maintained gardens which encompass a number of delightful features running the gamut from roses and various exotic blooming plants, to fish ponds and water gardens. Tickets for the tour are $10. For more information, or to obtain tickets here in Warren County, contact Janell Hawkins at 668-8534. Brochures with directions to each of the locations are available.

Included in the tour will be Rock Haven, designed and created by Rosemary Ponte, the former Rosemary Pedigo, an internationally known fiber artist. The daughter of the late John Lee and Ethel Pedigo, Rosemary was born in DeKalb County and would like to invite her numerous relatives and friends there and in Warren County to visit her garden during this event. Rosemary and her husband Al now reside in Cookeville.

Rock Haven, located at 855 Hillside Drive in Cookeville, includes a 150 foot-long perennial garden, an herb garden, a peony and hydrangea garden, a fish pond and water garden with surrounding Japanese and Siberian Iris and daylilies, a rose and hydrangea garden, a mixed color daylily garden and a large shade garden. Rosemary specialized in daylilies and iris in her garden, but has them interspersed with numerous other old-fashioned perennials.

Also included in the tour is the Bostic Garden, located at the home of Teresa Bostic and her husband Scott Dunn at 2007 Slim Bray Road. This couple has transformed their lot into a variety of shady and sunny garden areas.

The Coleman Gardens, located at 220 Fairview in Cookeville, features a design by Tim Patterson of Highland Designs in Paundridge, N.Y. Included in this garden are more than 50 varieties of roses, mainly hybrid teas.

The Smith Garden, at 12819 Old Baxter Road, Silver Point, is comprised of approximately 300 roses consisting of miniatures, floribundas, hybrid teas, shrubs, David Austin roses, and climbers. The majority of the roses are grown in raised beds that are connected by a winding slate stone path.

The tour receipts will benefit the Pilot Club?s many community projects and nursing scholarship program.