For thirty years visitors have enjoyed seeing the Bellingrath Home dressed for the holidays as they attend Magic Christmas in Lights. It would be wonderful if we had images of what some of the rooms looked like decorated for Christmas when Walter and Bessie Bellingrath were here, but so far, none have surfaced.

Ernest Edgar, Jr., a nephew of Bessie Bellingrath, was in attendance at Christmas dinners in the Home from the first in 1936 until the early 1950’s. His recollection was of a simpler time when the rooms featured red candles in silver holders and red poinsettias.

Greenery used in those days might have consisted of boxwood, cedar, holly, pine, magnolia leaves and Southern Smilax. A cedar Christmas tree would be set up and decorated on Christmas Eve in households where there were small children – not before Halloween which seems to be the current idea.

A photograph unearthed in the History Museum of Mobile features Ernest posed with his son’s Christmas train set on the floor of the Bellingraths’ home on Ann Street in Mobile. In the distance is the Tiffany Pond Lily Lamp and a framed photograph of Walter Bellingrath.

The fireplace mantel shows a very simple strand of Southern Smilax. That evergreen vine with its glistening green elliptical-shaped leaves grows wild around Mobile and was used for decorating every event from weddings to Christmas in years gone by. And this prolific vine gets its name from the Greek word for “clasping.”

Also in use for the Bellingrath table would be a set of china by Royal Worcester in their Regency Ruby pattern. This extensive dinner set has the production date mark of 1940 and while we use the china to decorate the tables in the Home at Christmas, Mrs. Bellingrath actually purchased it do complement her dining room’s color scheme year round.

Decoration of the interior of the Bellingrath Home will begin a bit early this year, but the theme of a Bellingrath family Christmas will be our inspiration once again.

In football, there are those who feel that momentum is simply an illusion, but there are others who strongly feel that it is real and perceivable. I tend to fall in the latter camp, probably because I tend to get really wrapped up in the games that I follow. Likewise, at Bellingrath Gardens & Home, our forward momentum is both real and palpable. Many of the projects that I have been mentioning over the past couple of years or so are moving along very quickly now, and those of you who have visited BGH in recent weeks can attest to this progress.

1. The Summer House renovation is well underway. As of this writing, the timber frame roof has been erected and tongue-and-groove roof cladding is partially installed. Work is also underway for a plaque that will recognize our major donors to this project. When completed, this restoration will showcase the level of design, detail, and craftsmanship that we will apply to all future work done in enacting the Master Plan. With the refurbished iron lace being the next step in this construction project, that will only leave the copper roof to be installed, something that may have to wait until after the 2025 Magic Christmas in Lights season is finished.

2. The Magnolia Room Phase 1 improvements project is also underway, to the point that work should be completed within another week or so. The two major changes that Phase 1 brings to this conference room are that a) a corridor now exists for Café staff to walk from the Kitchen to the Pantry without having to interrupt guests in the Magnolia Room, and b) a connecting doorway now opens the Magnolia Room up to the Dining Hall, providing us with flexibility for renting each room separately, or together. Phase 2 will see floor and ceiling treatments for the Magnolia Room, but no timetable is yet set for this phase. We extend our sincere gratitude to The Dr. Monte L. Moorer Foundation Charitable Trust, The A.S. Mitchell Foundation, and The Julien E. Marx Foundation Trust for their generous support in making this project possible.

3. The Admissions Building is enjoying exciting changes to its interiors via the completion of Phase 1 upgrades: new flooring (carpet and tile treatments) and an always helpful fresh coat of paint. (We even have haint blue ceilings, now, ya’ll!) The bathroom corridor for this building also has new carpet and will soon have beautiful new wallpaper, which we can’t wait for you to see. As this building is the literal “front door” of BGH, we have long wanted to update the décor, which was showing its age. Thanks to our recent successes in bringing in more visitors to BGH, we are happy to be able to present to you these newly refreshed building interiors that are furnished by the very dollars we collect at Admissions.

4. Over the last few years, we have been systematically replacing old, worn-out roofs on our many buildings scattered around the BGH campus.  The latest project, completed just last month, saw the replacement of a decades’-old asphalt shingle roof on the Horticulture / Development Office building.  In the grand scheme of things, this was not a major project, but it still represents a $13,000+ investment going against a backlog of over $10-15 million in deferred maintenance work needed at BGH.  And, for our Horticulture leadership team and our Director of Development, this is a welcome improvement to the building where they are based.

5. A project that I have probably not yet mentioned is one that will see BGH begin to flex its science muscles, allowing us to communicate with the Fowl River in real time.  What such project could this be?  Is it something of science fiction?  Is this like the Russians training dolphins to detect sea mines? Well, no!  Working with our colleagues at both the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL), we have purchased equipment that will allow us to measure and share data revealing how the Fowl River is a living and breathing ecosystem.  This specialized equipment will continuously measure the Fowl River’s water temperature, flow, dissolved oxygen content, and salinity, and these data will be logged and communicated for visitors to observe directly.  Imagine being be able to show students in our STEM Education Program and visitors, via a computer monitor station located on the river pavilion, exactly what is happening with the Fowl River after a heavy rainfall, or with a strong southeasterly wind, or during a period of drought?!  We think that the possibilities are endless, and our partners at MBNEP and DISL are just as excited as we are.

Recently, I communicated to the Garden’s Board of Directors that over the past five years BGH has invested over $3.4 million back into the organization, much needed funds that are helping drive our palpable growth and momentum.  These investments are only possible because of your continuing patronage and support, but, truthfully, … the best is yet to come.  For the five projects I described above, I could list five more that are underway or in the planning stages.

As always, stay tuned for continuing excitement and inspiration from “The Charmed Spot of the South,” and make sure to visit often to see these positive changes taking place.

Sincerely,

Todd

Fall.
Sometimes just one perfectly placed word is enough to set our minds ablaze with memories, nostalgia, feelings, expectations, ruminations. It’s as if a portion of our lives—often recurrent—can be crammed into the space of just a syllable or two, lying dormant until the magic word is uttered. Let’s try another one…

Pumpkins.

There’s something so distinctive about the about the way pumpkins look, taste, feel, smell—even the sound they make when thumped. Most of us can identify a pumpkin with four of our five senses tied behind our back! Also, the presence of pumpkins indicates when we are…October and November most likely. Plants, flowers and fruits are synonymous with majority of our holidays and traditional events, but is there any one single plant that joins together consecutive holidays over an entire season like pumpkins?

One Hundred Seventy-Nine.

The Great Bellingrath Harvest is a celebration of fall, along with its traditional holidays and events. And everywhere, there are pumpkins. Once again this year, we unloaded and stacked 30,000 lbs of pumpkins, each placed carefully…one at a time. A huge pumpkin fountain, obelisks, a pumpkin tree, and piles of pumpkins everywhere—Bellingrath’s Display Designer, Barbara Smith designed and orchestrated the installation. The display is very different than last year, with every major display concentration being new and unique. My favorite pumpkin decoration hovers over the square fountain on the plaza near the Bellingrath Home—the color and texture coordination is spot on. But that’s just my opinion…tell us what pile of pumpkins is your favorite! Nineteen people pitched in over the course of 14 consecutive days. How long did it take for us to unload and stack 15 tons of pumpkins? Glad you asked. 179 hours. Again…19 people…what a great team effort!

The Front Porch.

Finally, while we think you’ll be amazed at some of the larger than life pumpkin displays, we hope you’ll find the dozens of smaller groupings tucked away in the many nooks and crannies around the garden to be something that you might repeatable on your own front porch.

We are excited for you to join us for Great Bellingrath Harvest. The calendar can be found on our website here:

The Great Bellingrath Harvest

Mobile Bay Magazine is a popular local publication. This summer I was asked to stop by their Government Street offices for an interview to reflect on my twenty years of my column, Ask McGehee. I was shown into a conference room and it was suddenly filled with the entire staff of the magazine including publisher, T. J. (Jocko) Potts, and Executive Editor, Maggie Lacy.

I was surprised with a framed thank you for my contributions to the magazine with an image of my first column which included a photograph of the Murray Forbes Smith home on Government Street. How appropriate, since the brick from the demolition of that house was used to construct the Bellingrath Home.

In the process I was asked how the column came about. When I was originally approached to be a contributor I had to be honest and say that I really did not like the content of the magazine and had canceled my subscription. I was assured that the publication was going in a totally new direction and they wanted this area’s history to be a big part of the new format.

We patterned Ask McGehee after a popular column in Memphis Magazine which focused on all sorts of local history. So I started my column with a piece about the Vanderbilt connection to Mobile, hence the photo of the house where Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had been born.

It has been fun researching some familiar topics, such as long gone restaurants, department stores and buildings. Those bring back a lot of fond memories for our readers. But it is the details I uncover which often result in a “Wow, I have lived her my whole life but never knew that before.” That has been a pleasure for me in writing the column over the years.

And just as our tours of the Bellingrath Home include many wonderful stories I have collected from relatives and former employees of Bessie and Walter Bellingrath, my columns are often infused with tales I have collected from Mobilians now sadly long deceased. And the majority of these stories were never sought by previous historians, so I am glad I captured so many over the years.

Twenty years of a monthly column equates to 240 columns. I was asked if I thought I would run out of topics. My answer was “In Mobile? Never.”

Visit and Connect with Us

On September 12, 1979 Mobile was hit by Hurricane Frederic. That horrendous storm visited Bellingrath Gardens and Home on that memorable night, accompanied by at least two destructive tornadoes. Within 24 hours, just over 2,000 trees were downed and nearly 23,000 shrubs were smashed beneath them. Nine greenhouses were torn to bits and the entire irrigation system was left in a shambles.

Perhaps the most striking memory was that of long time horticulturist Pat Ryan who said that the Bellingrath Home was visible from the front parking lot when he was able to reach the Gardens. And that, he added, was a sight even the Bellingraths themselves had never seen.

Mirror Lake had been filled with debris, its rustic bridge damaged. The riverfront was brutally scared from floodwaters and the corpse of a dog was found in the base pool of the Grotto.

George Downing, chairman of the Bellingrath-Morse Foundation stated “one-third of the photos in our souvenir book are not applicable now.” Indeed, the scarred and missing trees he now saw looked nothing like the lush tree canopy found in the book’s images.

The Home

Local decorator Wade Lott had overseen the redecoration of the Home a year earlier and was proud to have it featured within the pages of the magazine Southern Accents. In December of 1979, a local reporter writing about Bellingrath’s recovery stated: “Replacements for furniture damaged when the tide waters washed into the home’s main floor are on order.”

No tide waters touched the Bellingrath Home, but the wind and rain did. The most damage occurred to the second floor sleeping porch which lost its roof. It was lifted and dropped onto the East Terrace. The force of the storm destroyed much of the furniture formerly in this space.

A storm shutter on one of the east facing windows in the Purple Guest Room fell off and some sort of projectile hit a pane of glass, leaving a very small hole. When the room was entered the next day, the furnishings were all wet and there were shredded leaves everywhere. All that water and leaves had entered through a hole barely large enough for a pencil to fit through.

The original Ludowici tile roof on the home had damage and George Downing stated that “replacement tiles are on order from the manufacturer.” Sadly that was not the case and the house was shingled with a standard asphalt product.

Tulip Time

The Gardens reopened on March 1, 1980 and visitors were amazed to see the memorable sight of 40,000 tulips in bloom in the Rotary Rose Garden. A rain later that day was accompanied by gales of 35 to 40 miles per hour. The temperature that night dropped to 18 degrees with a wind chill of -13 degrees. Every tulip froze and turned black.

Thankfully the Gardens and the Home rebounded. The formerly shaded garden was replanted for sun loving flowers. Since that time trees have been planted and the Gardens now have a balance of sun and shade, nearly 50 years after an unwelcome visitor named Frederic.

Dominating Mr. Bellingrath’s bedroom is his impressive desk upon its spiral turned legs. The piece does not appear in the 1943 or 1947 inventories of the Home’s contents. The 1964 guidebook to the Home explains that it had previously been in the library of the Bellingraths’ home on Ann Street.

And why didn’t Mr. Bellingrath have a desk in his home at his Gardens? The answer is he did, but it was a modern office desk in his working office in the basement. So, he apparently did not have this decorative desk moved to its present location until after 1949 when he was preparing the Home for the eventual tours to take place after his death.

The author of the guidebook said that Mr. Bellingrath had purchased “the English walnut desk” and arm chair “in Chicago at one of the antique shows.” The only problem with that statement is that it was nowhere near being an “antique” during his lifetime and it is not English.

Research has found that it was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan by the Luce Furniture Company which had been established in 1896 by Ransom C. Luce. Thomas S. Handley, who had trained in London served as staff designer there and held a special interest in English period styles and was with the firm until 1915. It is safe to say that this was one of Handley’s designs.

What Style is it?

The style is definitely English, but the specific style is debatable. Some would term it Jacobean (1603-1625) or is it William and Mary (1685-1720)? In the 1980’s an appraiser termed it “Charles II” a term interchangeable with Carolean (1660-1685).

The only thing certain is that it combines many of the designs from the 17^th century in England which were influenced by furniture being made in both Holland and France. Styling was moving away from the starkness preferred by the Puritans and moving towards a more opulent look. The walnut desk is skillfully inlaid with ebony and a vine of flowers and leaves using mother of pearl and ivory.

This combination of designs was a hallmark of the many furniture makers in Grand Rapids in the early 20^th century. Those firms were seeking to create adaptations to suit American consumers, not faithful reproductions.

It is very doubtful that Walter Bellingrath would have any idea that his desk was American made. Nor would he ever guess that Jex H. Luce, his next door neighbor on Ann Street in the 1920’s, was the grandson of the founder of the Luce Furniture Company.

On July 11, 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published. In the sixty-five years since that date the Pulitzer Prize winning book has been translated into 40 languages and sold an estimated 40 million copies. The 1962 film supplied Gregory Peck with a signature role and an Oscar. While authors notoriously dislike screenplays of their work, Miss Lee so liked Peck’s interpretation of her father that she presented him with Mr. Lee’s pocket watch.

Two important characters have a strong connection to gardens and flowers. Bellingrath Gardens is mentioned in both the book and the film but in different places. And since the plot takes place in Alabama in the mid-1930’s it’s not surprising that the Monroeville-born author would have included it in her book.

In the novel, in Chapter 8, neighbor Maudie Atkinson’s house burns down on a cold night and the firemen trample her flower beds. Throughout the beginning of the story Miss Maudie is often observing the antics of Scout, Jem and Dill as she works in her garden and is portrayed as their friend and confidante.

As the children tell her how sorry they are, Maudie Atkinson, ever the optimist, has this to say:

“Always wanted a smaller house Jem Finch. Gives me more yard –gracious I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama! Those Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!”

The 1962 screenplay does not have this scene. Instead the mention comes early in the film when Jem, Scout and Dill are happily racing to meet Atticus as he returns from work. The crotchety porch-bound Mrs. DuBose does not appear in the book until Chapter 11 and Bellingrath Gardens is not mentioned there. However her camellia garden, which is decimated by an angry Jem is.

In the movie version Mrs. DuBose’s garden is used for a different purpose. Jem has walked ahead but races back to his sister and Dill with the somber warning that Mrs. DuBose is out on her porch. He whispers to a curious Dill: “She has a Confederate pistol under her shawl. She’ll kill you quick as look at you!”

After Scout gets the woman agitated by saying “Hey” to her as she passes instead of “Good afternoon” the three children run on to meet Atticus. As they walk back Mrs. DuBose is still hollering and Atticus plays the perfect gentleman. He removes his hat and offers her this greeting:

Goodness, gracious look at your flowers! Mrs. DuBose, the Gardens at Bellingrath have nothing to compare with your flowers. Your yard is going to be the showplace of this town! Grand seeing you Mrs. DuBose.”

The old lady’s fit instantly disappears as she glances proudly around her garden.

Anyone who enjoys Bellingrath Gardens should take a look at either this entertaining novel or movie. Watch for the garden imagery and Bellingrath Gardens in one of the most famous books of the 20th century which has now reached an important birthday.