By Candice Dyer | June/July 2009 | 

The Party Garden

In the shadow of Flannery O’Connor, a Milledgeville garden comes to life 

Deep in the heart of Georgia, in an area known for its red clay, rolling hills, and pine trees, Charles and Irene Miller have created a private garden sanctuary. An allée of Bradford pear trees leads the way to their Jardins des Coeurs, or Gardens of the Hearts, a collective of seven discrete garden rooms aligned on cross axes and connected by winding paths.

The very soil itself has a story to tell. These five acres were once part of Andalusia, the farm of author Flannery O’Connor, who raised peafowl and penned grotesquely comic, visionary masterpieces such as Wise Blood and A Good Man Is Hard to Find until her death in 1964. “If you walk about a mile straight through the woods from our garden, you’re at her house,” Charles says. “Our place is where Flannery O’Connor’s cow pasture used to be. We wouldn’t be surprised if her ghost were to pop into our parties now and then.” In the garden’s first few years, peacocks would stray onto the grounds, along with Flossie the skinny hinny, a rare donkey-horse hybrid that descended from some of the animals that lived at Andalusia—vivid reminders of O’Connor’s legacy here.

The couple began developing the grounds in 1994, with the help of garden designer Ryan Gainey, a family friend, who lent his expertise. Most of the plants are, like the Millers, natives with deep roots in the Piedmont and heirloom pedigrees. Camellias, azaleas, Confederate jasmine, and other fluttery belles are squired by columns of boxwood hedges as squared away as the cadets at nearby Georgia Military College, where Irene teaches etiquette and protocol.

At the center is the Blue Garden, with a saltwater pool fringed in flowers of various shades of sky: hydrangea, iris, vitex, sage, and aster, including the ‘Rachel Jackson’ aster derived from the first lady’s garden at the Hermitage. A freestanding fireplace made of Elberton granite warms the dance floor.

“We truly live in our garden,” says Irene. (Do they ever—the garden’s “summer kitchen” alone stores 350 wineglasses.) “I didn’t want to expand the house, because changing its structure would alter its memories. So we add on to the garden, which functions as a public-friendly extension of our living room, where there is always a glass of champagne for anyone who wants it.” The Millers estimate that “between Memorial Day and the time change” they entertain around eight hundred people. The garden has become a gathering place for the community—a fragrant stage for mimosa-fueled wedding brunches, baccalaureate dances, and other glass-clinking milestones, as well as school field trips. That hospitality even extends to the plump cats and dogs lounging here and there—and
the peacocks.