Garden Song (Spring 2007)

People around Knoxville, Tenn., know her as the lead singer in the award-winning Jenna and the Joneses blues band. Folks at Harrogate, Tenn., where she lives on 26 carefully maintained acres outside town, know her as the lady with the fantastic gardens.

Luttrell put all this together on land that was overrun with weeds, vines, and briars. He retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in September 1990, and moved back to his hometown in east Tennessee. First intending to live on nine acres he owned, his plans changed after he encountered this rundown property.

“The house here was pretty good but the yard was terrible. It was covered with briars and vines growing 14 feet tall,” he says. “It had been untouched for a while. I started cutting and did what I could. It took a while to get to the point that I could see the potential.”

He had no formal horticultural training but during all those years in the Marines, gardening became his hobby. When he traveled, he toured gardens. He made friends in the gardening world and began speaking to gardening groups, as well.

This place, he saw, had shade, plenty of it. Maybe too much shade for some plants, he figured. That made hosta his plant of choice. He has beautiful azaelas, wonderful daylilies, nice acuba and japonica, and other interesting plants, but hosta reigns here.

“There are many, many cultivars of hosta here,” Luttrell says. “Hosta has such wide range. It can fit in so many situations. There’s full-grown hosta that has a half-inch leaf. Or it can be 18 inches long and 12 inches wide.

“There are different colors, streaks, and variegations,” he continues. “It’s just beautiful. You can have multiple looks with hosta. It brightens up a place. A lot of plants don’t do that, but hosta can in just a short time.”

The land keeps her focused. It’s part of the farm where her grandfather made his living from tobacco and other crops. Though she’s lived in big cities from time to time, the best years of her life have been spent here. “The horses of my childhood are buried here. It’s my place in the world,” she says.

Her two-acre botanical garden has several large themed plots. A poet’s garden grows plants Shakespeare mentioned in his plays and sonnets. There’s a garden designed to attract butterflies and bees. Another grows heirloom vegetables. A rose garden bursts into bloom come springtime. Her Native American garden, in tribute to her grandmother Jefferson, a Cherokee “wise woman,” is shaped like a thunderbird and grows plants and herbs used in Indian medicinal remedies.

One garden, she says, is her thinking garden, “because I’m still thinking about what to call it.” There’s a serpentine garden, 1,500 feet long and winding like a snake. Her moon garden is filled with plants that reflect moonlight. Another, a dry creek garden with a small pond, is her newest project.

It’s all organic. She taught herself gardening techniques by trial and error, and reading.

“I call it all a ‘grief garden.’ I started working on it after my father died from lung cancer. I felt like I had to do something for him. I first built one herb garden. Then it grew and grew and grew,” she says. Now garden tour groups arrive by the busload, wanting to know how she does it. She lectures about organic gardening and herbs.

Walking among the irises, dogwoods, hollyhocks, daisies, and hundreds of other species, some blooming but all green and thriving, she marvels at the gift of her land. It all fits her love for this place where she grew up, with her love for natural beauty that people enjoy so much. It even dovetails nicely with Jefferson’s love for music, which she began performing on stage at age 12 in a church gospel group. Now, she concentrates on blues, getting back to the roots of true American music. “I love that music. I love the soulfulness you get with what I call ‘roots music’,” she says.

She enjoys things that are real, things worth sinking hands and sweat and mind into. “I like things I can be passionate about. The gardening is one of those. You have to be passionate about the land and nature to do it right. There’s a lot of physical work, a lot of hard manual work. It’s not pretty work. You really have to love it to enjoy it,” she says.

When she’s on stage, she dances as she sings, plays congas, jokes with the audience, and even works up a sweat. She approaches gardening with the same intensity and drive. “I work at my job all day. Then, during warm weather, I’m home in the garden by 5:30 p.m., and I work out there until dark. I usually play with the band in clubs a couple of nights a week. It’s a busy life,” she says.

“When I was in my 20s and 30s, I could really multi-task. Now that I’m in my 40s, I see that isn’t the way to live. Now I try not to worry about all those little details. I’m not overwhelmed with trivial things. I just do my best to enjoy the process.” Singing the blues on stage is fun. Gardening passionately is fulfilling. But her nursing work, caring for patients dealing with paralysis, is her reason for being, she says.

“From the time they go into intensive care, I’m there, coordinating everything until they’re medically discharged. Somebody has to be an advocate for these people. There’s a lot of injustice in our world. People with physical disabilities face such social challenges. That’s where I come in,” she says. She’s on call all the time and travels widely caring for patients. If one Saturday she won the lottery, she’d still be at work Monday, she insists, saying that her patients teach her as much as she helps them.

“They have so far to go to get back to where they were. They’re such a lesson in human frailty and the human spirit. I’m always amazed at how they rise above overwhelming hurdles and roadblocks. It just fills me up spiritually,” she says. When things get a little too intense out there, she can always retreat to the garden. “That’s where I work off stress. Out there digging in the soil, and singing blues. It’s pretty private here. I see deer, turkey, hummingbirds, pheasants, fox. I love it. It’s had a magnetic pull on my life,” she says.