The next garden was a mere 5 minutes away. If you have ever been to a garden convention, that is amazingly close.
Plantation Point Nursery is owned by Dr. Stan Schikowitz and his wife, Bobbie Hutchinson. Bobbie is a past president of the SLI.
Plantation Point Nursery used to be a youth summer camp for kids. It sat abandoned for ten years before they bought it. Their house sits where the dining hall/cook house was. They originally planned to renovate it but when they tore into it they realized it was beyond repair and they demolished it.
This is the view looking out the back towards Caddo Lake. Note the railings on the pier. In March the lake rose so much it covered the railings and also many of the iris on the lake side. They had to take the boat out of the boathouse or it would have been sunk or it would have destroyed the roof of the boathouse.
I went with a group and followed Stan as he gave a quick tour of the property.
First stop was their ponds. The lower pond has been stocked with catfish. The middle pond was used to grow fresh water prawns at first but now is used to grow crayfish. More on the crayfish pond later.
The next stop was the Orangerie, a Victorian style greenhouse. Bobby uses it to grow tomatoes and other vegetables in the winter. She said winter is the best time to can tomatoes.
Stan sat and talked about their plans for the place and also the damage they suffered from the flooding.
This water feature is almost done. They will be planting the steps in the summer.
The flood would have been bad enough just having covered the irises for over a week. Louisiana iris can live in water. When it is storming they are at the downwind end of the lake and tons of trash washed up and covered the iris. Other things floated away.
Iris had been planted right down to the lake.
This greenhouse was heavily damaged by the flood.
This was their collection of species iris. It was underwater most of the flood. Stan thought that he had lost his bloom for the year but society members went down and looked and there were lots of stalks forming, just a little late.
This is the smokehouse and the apiary is in the back yard behind the fence with the 'Bees at Work' sign.
Many of the other buildings like the bunk houses, the shower building and the maintenance buildings are still there. Some are lived in by workers and others are use for a variety of uses (one is set up as a tissue culture lab).
One is the coffee roaster. Stan is passionate about his coffee and sells to some of the high end restaurants in Shreveport. His brand is "Plantation Gourmet Coffee" and it is available online.
Another is where they cast stepping stones and garden art.
They have a large maintainence shop. It's a necessity to keep up a place that large.
Bobbie's brother, Ron Killingsworth, and his wife Sue also live and work on the property. This is their house.
This is the famous (OK, only locally-they did make the local paper) Mooringsport Ferry. When the lake flooded it cut off many people from town. Ron and another neighbor took their boats to the flooded spot on the road and ferried people across every morning and evening. One lady ran out of food after three days. Two guys went to town and brought back four cases of beer and a half a case of scotch. Everybody has their priorities.
