Flower July/August 2025

“Choose her a name she will answer to Call her Green, and the winters cannot fade her Call her Green for the children who’ve made her Little Green, be a gypsy dancer”–JONI MITCHELL I JUST BOUGHT A GREEN CAR. Not just any green, but Goodwood Green, named after a racetrack in England that is often referred to as “the spiritual birthplace of motor racing.” You may know the color by the more common name “British Racing Green.” Lately, I’ve been drawn to green more and more. It used to be blue, now it’s green. I have a green bedroom, dressed in a green-and-cream floral wall covering. Right now, I’m sitting in a moss green velvet chair. My favorite handbag is a Kelly green crushed patent leather number with a bamboo handle.…

A soft glow flatters everyone, especially after a long day in the sun. These lighting options appeal even more because they’re rechargeable and able to keep the party going well into the night.…

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL DECADES, we’ve experienced a remarkable renais-sance of heirloom tomato varieties. For many of us, this has been our first opportunity to discover the wonderful, intense flavors of “true tomatoes,” which are unlike the tomatoes we find in the grocery store during winter months. Those have been bred for mechanical harvesting, shipping, and shelf life, and they often have a plastic taste. Heirloom varietals such as Gulf State, Oxheart, Pineapple, Ponderosa, Winsall, and 1884—to name just a few of my favorites—are juicier with complex flavors that range from sweet to spicy to tangy. Perhaps what I look forward to most during tomato season are the sandwiches. A perfect one requires only three things: white bread, Duke’s mayonnaise, and a thick slice of an heirloom tomato.…

Watering Ideally, water your tomatoes in the morning with a soaker hose to prevent splashing on the leaves. Bury the soaker hose in the mulch beneath the plants. The plants will be happiest with around 2 inches of water per week. It’s okay to allow the dirt to begin to dry out, but try not to swing back and forth between overly dry soil and saturated soil because this may cause the tomatoes to split. Feeding Tomatoes are a hungry crop. Throughout the growing season, they like to be fertilized every three to four weeks until the first frost. Pruning Tomato plants need air circulation without too much overgrowth between plants. Pruning allows better airflow and may help reduce the risk of blight. Pinching plants produces larger fruit faster but…

Before the birds begin their morning twittering, Shirley Williams is awake and working on her first espresso of the day. The octogenarian catches up on news, completes a series of back-strengthening exercises, and practices some brain calisthentics (okay, Wordle) until 7:00 am when she ventures outside. Then she launches into her daily six-hour stint that involves weeding, planting, and doing the dirty work necessary to maintain the land that has been her family’s legacy since 1976. It all began with Shirley and husband Peter’s dedication of doing justice to a 300-year-old house. Soon, the focus expanded outward as the couple approached the garden the same way. The result is a legacy written into the land. Family was foremost when the Williamses initially bought the house and its surrounding 6 acres.…

In a historic neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, designer Heather Chadduck Hillegas has created an elegant getaway only steps away from the 1920s Colonial-style house she shares with her husband, David. The new pool house, which Heather calls the folly, ties in architectural elements from their clapboard house and also draws inspiration from the breezy Caribbean style of one of the intrepid couple’s favorite places: Round Hill Hotel and Villas in Jamaica, where they were married 13 years ago and have returned every year since. The site for the new pool and folly required heavy machinery and plenty of patience while it was carved out of the hillside. “Everything needed to fit in a relatively small space, so we went tall and narrow,” says Heather, who enlisted James B. Laughlin for…