June 26, 2025
I walked into this garden and gasped. A tree with a woman’s face stood with one arm raised, holding a lantern in greeting. She cradled a potted plant in the crook of her other arm. What an unexpected, surreal vision!
It was the first day of the Memphis Fling. We’d been dropped off in the Lenox neighborhood and invited to explore any garden displaying a tour sign. At a shotgun-style house, I saw a tour sign in a tiny, ordinary front yard and wondered where the garden was hiding. Off to the side, behind a tree, a skinny, weather-beaten gate stood ajar — aha!
Squeezing through the opening, I looked up and read a bible verse etched overhead: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
The verse is backlit at night with flickering LED flame lights, explained the owner, Chip Morrison, in his write-up about the garden. I entered with “Hell” by Squirrel Nut Zippers playing in my head.
Through the gate, a hall-like path lies ahead, with faces displayed in niches on the fence.
The faces are raku-and-mixed-media ceramic masks by local artist Lester Jones.
Uplights in display boxes illuminate them at night. The effect might be eerie?
At the end of the gallery walk, you pass through an arbor that opens up to this: a surprisingly large garden with a splashing fountain and pond. Directly ahead, a tree seems to be growing into a leaf-etched wall.
And then you realize the tree isn’t real but a sculpture! This fantastical tree goddess, wearing a Lester Jones mask and posing like the Statue of Liberty, is the creation of Bernhard Meck, an environmental sculptor whose one-of-a-kind home and garden we’d visit on the last day of the Fling.
Wow, what a surprise after the modest front yard, nearly hidden entrance, and narrow path. Is this the owner’s representation of heaven — a tree spirit in a water garden?
The leafy wall and raised pond are also Bernhard’s work. A write-up by the owner explains, “The wall, originally adobe, was replaced with a set of plywood panels, skim-coated with concrete, printed with elephant ear leaves, and colorized.” The irregular oval pond, which appears to be built up with concrete blocks, is actually made of poured and sculpted concrete. We would see more of this fool-the-eye concrete sculpting at Bernhard’s place later.
An urn topped with another urn of purple heart functions as a trickling fountain.
The leaf wall, made extra tall with latticework, provides privacy for the garden but also sets a mood.
You’re entering a magical woodland where trees awaken in human form.
A stream meanders from the raised pond past a fire-pit patio and toward a stacked-stone waterfall. Overlooking the scene is a charming, New Orleans-inspired guesthouse.
Its doors, windows, and shutters were salvaged from a demolition shop.
A circular stained-glass window and side windows were salvaged from a Methodist church in the neighborhood that was torn down to make way for a CVS.
Behind the guesthouse, an arbor-shaded bench overlooks another small pond — dubbed the Pondgarten in tribute to sculptor Bernhard Meck’s German heritage. A dwarf Japanese maple spreads feathery foliage over the pond, sheltering a porcelain figurine of a fisherman.
He makes the scene into a miniature other world.
A great blue heron decoy guards yet another pond — the owner’s attempt to convince passing herons that the territory has already been claimed, and to spare his remaining goldfish.
Up next: An extravaganza of coneflowers, daylilies, and crape myrtles at Memphis Botanic Garden. For a look back at the lovely Casa Rosa garden in the rain, click here.
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Digging Deeper
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