When Tara Dillard married into the Cofer family and moved onto the family estate in Tucker, she didn’t know what a sweetshrub was, let alone its botanical name.

Twenty-five years later, the girl from Texas who had never smelled a sweetshrub loses me as she rattles off the botanica familiaris of the dozens of plants in her own lush landscape. Today, she is a nationally award-winning garden writer who has authored four gardening books and hosted her own television show for CBS. She lectures throughout the Southeast, and teaches regularly at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. She’s toured gardens throughout Europe and all over the US.

And it started with the love of an old-fashioned garden spot just off Lawrenceville Highway, and magazine clippings from a woman she refers to affectionately as ‘Granny.’

The daughter of a NASA engineer, Tara Dillard grew up in the shadow of the Johnson Space Center on the Texas coast. “We only had one season.”  she says. “When I moved here [Tucker], literally every two weeks something was coming into bloom…things I had never seen in person…maybe on TV or in a book. And it just thrilled me.”

“One of the grandest things that ever happened to me was the day a mature tulip magnolia came into bloom in Granny’s yard, full of perfect majesty. I stood at the base, getting dizzy and lost just looking up into it, holding onto the trunk so I wouldn’t fall over. The first year, living in Granny’s garage apartment, I can remember calling her every two weeks and saying, ‘Granny!  What is that blooming?’ or “What is that smell?  Where is it coming from?’ and she would say ‘Oh, you mean the sweetshrub?’ like it was nothing.”

“Granny” was Louise Cofer; Miss Louise to anyone who wasn’t family. Tara recalls her fondly as a ‘good woman.’ “The type that if you could be one-twentieth of one percent of what she was, you’d be a success; she was truly a matriarch in the old-fashioned sense of the word.”

Miss Louise’s garden wasn’t planned, but evolved over sixty years as a labor of love. Little did she know that her garden and the gardening articles she passed along to the eager novice were sowing the seeds of a successful career.

As a little girl, Tara didn’t have dreams of becoming a garden designer. “It’s not like I knew I wanted to BE anything.” she says. “I think I was the last generation of girls who grew up thinking I would be married and have children. By the time I went to college, I knew I wasn’t getting married – that was not a goal.”  So, of course, she married immediately out of college. “I married young,” she laughs, “too young.”

The petite, fashionably-dressed blonde crosses her legs and tells me “I was always a tomboy. I grew up in an era when kids could play outside, unsupervised, all day. I was always climbing trees and playing in sand piles. I appreciate that about my life now. I still wear pants that are filthy and worn out at the knees and get dirty and stinky all day long. Only now I am getting paid for it. I love it.”

But it wasn’t always that way. Newly married with an engineering degree from SMU she took a job she hated while she was putting her husband through graduate school. “I think everybody should have a job they hate.” she says. “It makes you think very clearly about what you do want.”

After two and a half years at a job she loathed but worked out of necessity, she saw a help wanted sign for a nursery on her way to work. She decided to stop and interview that afternoon on her way home. Tucker’s Pike Nurseries hired her on the spot.

" went to college again,” she continues, “and I got a degree in horticulture. Financially, horticulture is not known for being a hugely profitable career. And I have no regrets.”

So, long hours of hard, dirty work for low pay -- just what is it that she finds so appealing about a career in gardening?

“I know that when I go in my garden, grace is there for the taking. Its beauty and energy seep into you.”  she continues “[Gardening] is the only thing I do on this planet where I forget to eat. Not only do I forget to eat, I forget what time it is. Typically by the time I realize I’m hungry for lunch, it will be 6:00 p.m.”

“The garden has never let me down. No matter the hard work, time or money spent on it, it has never let me down. It’s always made me happy. A storm can destroy an arbor or plants that I love can die, and it’s an opportunity.”  She smiles wistfully. “In the garden, I get the choice of what comes next. Whereas when people disappoint me, (long pause) well, that’s an opportunity of a different sort.”

Not all of her time is spent digging in the dirt. Her design work has brought her fame as a garden author, television host, and speaker.

“I love writing about gardening.” she tells me. “Gardening is ephemeral, and it is important to me not only to educate about plants and gardening but also to preserve this knowledge, gained from many seasons, plants and mentors, so it goes forward. It’s an art and a science.” 

Part of her gardening arsenal is the literature that Louise Cofer passed along to her many years ago. “I still refer to articles she saved from the 1930’s.” she says, smiling.

“I think most people are very intuitive about gardens, but they don’t trust that intuitiveness. When I design, I listen to all of what they consider their ‘stupid statements.’  They’ll always preface it by saying ‘this is so stupid, but’ and that’s when I know the next sentence is exactly what we are going to do. I let them be more them.” 

The intuitiveness is correct. People talk about plant problems and say ‘this and that are wrong,’ and I say ‘Why?’  They may have never taken a class in their life, or watched HGTV, but ninety percent of the time they are correct. There is an intuitiveness we all have.”  What we don’t have is the luxury of 60 years of trial and error gardening to perfect our outdoor spaces.

“People no longer have the time to discover all the elements of creating a beautiful garden for themselves. That’s why they hire me. Nothing I do is hard, but there are a lot of little things about planning a garden.”

Like phasing. “Phasing a garden in is very important. We have definite planting seasons, and if you miss out on that, it’s not so much your money, it’s the time that’s lost. I rue lost time more than I would ever rue lost money. Money can be earned. Nobody can earn time.”

What Tara has invented is garden lifestyle consulting - like life coaching or career coaching – she jumpstarts the process for you, helping you seamlessly blend home and garden, interior views of beautiful exteriors. “It’s a process you would learn eventually, after many years,” she explains, “but I’m already there, and can pass what I’ve learned along to you.”

I get a sense that this is what is most important to her: passing along the legacy of grace and fulfillment that comes from creating and living in a beautiful garden space.

And what of the beautiful garden spot on Lawrenceville Highway, and the woman who started her on this path? 

“I loved Granny. I was there the day she died, and they took her out the front door. After several months we moved from her garage apartment into the big house and my gardening began in earnest. Fate finally took hold of my life in Granny’s garden”

Today, the garden with its sweetshrub, magnolias and ancient oaks has been replaced by a shopping center.

“It took me years before I could drive by the property after it went commercial – literally. I would come down Old Norcross and take a right before I got to Lawrenceville Highway so I didn’t have to see the trees and houses were gone. I couldn’t go in the Kroger until recently.”

“I was there the day the trees had all been knocked over and were on the ground. It was like a CS Lewis tale, the giants had fallen over and died. It was stunningly horrible.”

“I remember walking down our old path, worn through the woods between the houses – parents, grandparents, children, dogs, cats – we all used the same little path. And I walked straight into a tree that was on its side. It hit me at about thigh high. On its side this thing was taller than my knees. I just started crying. All the trees, acres of trees, were there, but lying on their sides, all around me, dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. I never wanted to go back.”

But the garden and Granny live on:  in her memory, in the ‘new’ garden she has created at her home in Stone Mountain, and the thriving career she’s built “just because of falling in love with Granny’s garden.”

“I was looking through some old pictures and the ones I was gazing at the most, with intent interest were not the pictures taken of trips, holidays and all that kind of stuff. That was nice, yes, but what I was staring at the most were the pictures of my pets and the front garden from 10 years ago. That was thrilling to me because I lived all of the changes that have taken place since then. It was so meaningful…my dogs, my cats, my career and my garden… what a nice life.”