Natchez Day 2

This morning we went and set up the exhibit for the 2013 IMGC and registered for the conference.  They have very nice Encore bags as  goody bags and we got a traveling mug with the logo and lots of stuff. There are almost 500 folks registered and 106 from Arkansas! We brought the bags back to the room and went exploring, as our garden tour was not until 1:00.  One thing I liked that they did was all of the “staff” is wearing a big MG button that says staff.  That could be identifiable instead of wearing the same shirt for 4 days! 

We saw many beautiful homes and gardens and rolled our window down and talked to folks in their gardens.  We saw the largest and most floriforous oleander I have ever seen. The jasmine is in full bloom and we saw tons of gardenias and crape myrtles.  One thing I will say about Natchez folks, is they do know how to prune crape myrtles.  I have seen very few butchered plants.  They also have many single trunk specimens which are quite nice.  We toured a muscadine winery where they bottle 12 different types of muscadine wine–most sweet, but two that were quite dry.  They also sell a product made from the seeds and skins which is supposed to give you more energy and cure many ills–I bought some, so I will let you know!!

There are still snapdragons blooming all over town, and even some pansies, although we have also seen stunning petunias.  It got warm today–86 and 90% humidity.  We went to Longwood, which was supposed to be a 5 story plantation home but the civil war kept it as a completed shell and a completed basement. Interesting.  We also toured a native American garden, and did a Natchez drive.  There are more antebellum (pre-Civil War) homes here than anywhere else in the south.  They only have about 20% of what was built, but most of them are beautifully restored, and many have individual families living in them.  The city of Natchez only has 15,000 residents and 2,000 are members of a federated garden club.  They take their gardening and home preservation quite serious. 

The bluff over the Mississippi River was beginning to deteriorate, so they used an inovative blown concrete to build up the bluff to a tune of 42 million dollars.  It is pretty impressive to look down 100 feet or more of concrete.