The Practiced Garden: Southern Grace

Fine Jewelry Designer, Elizabeth Locke, is the epitome of Southern Grace. Well-traveled and having spent years away in Italy and then New York, she enjoys coming home to her Countryside Estate in Virginia. There's nowhere she'd rather relax than in her gardens.

​ Elizabeth jokes that when designing her Gothic-style greenhouse with her Architect, she nearly fainted at the price! But, she recalls, "there was nothing else that looked like it anywhere so I held my nose and wrote the check." She says the greenhouse is the joy of her existence.

Practiced gardeners have learned to take the long view—the only way to start is to start, and over time, all the trial and error will pay off. As Elizabeth puts it, “People think if you haven’t had a garden forever, it won’t look like anything. But ours is only five years old!”

Locke likes a good party as well! She says that maintaing an English - style garden is worth it and celebrates her blooms with backyard garden parties. She hosts a celebration when Asiatic lilies flower in June, followed by a dahlia dinner – complete with rouge mint cocktails – in late summer. Sounds like she has Southern hospitality nailed!

Sources: Veranda, One Kings Lane, elizabethlocke.com, Photography: Lesley Unruh