THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9508310261
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 177 lines
AS YOU DRIVE down the long lane leading to their home in Chesopeian Colony, you get your first taste of how Mack and Shirley Todd's unpredictable garden grows.
A large wooden goose has a mailbox for a body and on its back a planter full of plastic flowers and butterflies. The white fence along the lane is adorned with pretty baskets of plastic flowers, too.
At the end of the lane, visitors are greeted by several concrete deer, painted brown and with green glass eyes. They are partially concealed by foliage and dappled by the sunlight coming through the many trees on the Todds' big, wooded waterfront lot.
A sign on one of the trees welcomes you to ``Cape Todd.''
A little, wooden bluebird on a stake in the ground is painted with the word, ``Hi.''
As you pull around the driveway, you notice huge camellias towering overhead, interspersed with azaleas everywhere. Those camellias are going on 50 years old, the same number of years that the Todds have been married. The couple moved the plants to this two-acre point of land overlooking the Lynnhaven River from their first home in Norfolk 35 years ago.
The camellias are a mainstay of a fanciful garden that represents years and years of continuous fits of imagination leading to creating, building and planting and more creating, building and planting.
Everywhere you look you see another garden garnish - hanging baskets, stone lawn ornaments, fountains, strings of lights, bridges, steps, gates and swings.
If there is a theme to this wonderful hodgepodge, you would have to say it is Oriental. But give the Todds a lawn ornament, any lawn ornament, and, ``I can usually find a place for it,'' Shirley said, laughing.
Yet Oriental sets the garden's tone because the first thing you see at the foot of the driveway is a Japanese tea house. Painted bright Chinese red, it is complete with a working water wheel and pool.
Up the hill from the water wheel is an Oriental humpback bridge, which overlooks a waterfall that flows into the pool. When company comes, Shirley pulls out an Oriental runner to adorn the bridge.
Nearby is a Japanese gate, and down by the water is a round Chinese moon gate that features an iron gate from a local jail. The Todds marked their 50th wedding anniversary in August under another gate, an iron arch of no specified nationality. A bright, Chinese red zigzag bridge in the middle of the yard crosses over a ``stream bed'' of rocks.
Although many of their garden accessories are Oriental, the plantings are not. Wild azaleas and mountain laurel that were on the undeveloped property when they purchased it, still grow in the woodsy setting.
``Mine isn't manicured like theirs,'' she said, comparing her Oriental look to a true Oriental garden. ``Theirs is more simplistic. Mine is more rustic.''
The builder of all Shirley's gates, bridges and other whimsies is husband Mack, who retired in 1978 from Todd Farm Equipment. For Mack, retirement was simply a matter of working harder in the garden.
``She just shows me a picture. `I want one of these,' she says,'' Mack explained. ``A picture - that's all. No plans. I build it, and if it's not right, I tear it down and start over.''
Mack also dug the well, rigged the overhead sprinkling system and did the wiring for every one of the lights that stretch out across the whole two acres. There are spot lights, patio lights, lights in Chinese lanterns strung from trees, tiny Christmas lights woven with plastic garlands to form still more arches and even a concrete frog whose mouth lights up.
The work keeps Mack busy. ``I would never have married a golfer!'' Shirley said.
As for Mack, he never thinks about golf either. ``Some people get their recreation out of golf, tennis and sports,'' he said. ``I get all my pleasure right here.''
His construction began 35 years ago with the cobblestone retaining wall he built even before the house was built. Over the years, the 75-year-old Mack and sons, Bruce and Stuart Todd, bulkheaded all 1,200 feet of waterfront by hand. Several sets of hand-built steps lead down to the water from the higher parts of the lot.
No telling how many tons of stone have made their way to the Todd yard. From the retaining wall to the concrete rubble in the bulkhead to the stone river bed to the steps to the stone deck down by the bulkhead, there's concrete in various forms everywhere. Mack and Shirley Todd have lifted most of it. ``Some years, we've gotten 15 loads of stones,'' Shirley said.
Still, the biggest project by far was the Japanese teahouse and water wheel, Mack said. It took him two years to conceive and construct. He used glass apple juice jars rather than pottery jugs on the water wheel. As the jars fill with water, the wheel turns. He cut underground cable pipe into small pieces and then configured each piece to groove into the next to create a roof, which looks a little like a Mexican tile roof.
As with the roof, it doesn't bother the Todds that they are not authentic. The black metal lock on the door is from the 17th century, but Shirley found a metal panel in an Oriental design to fit behind the lock.
``Even my locks are mixed up,'' Shirley said, laughing. ``I've got a crazy, mixed-up garden.''
What wasn't built by Mack Todd, Shirley Todd purchased from the Pottery Factory in Williamsburg. The shopping trips to the Pottery began years ago. Shirley, who has been well known as a local flower and horticulture show judge for many years, spent most of what she made from the very beginning at the Pottery Factory.
``Every time I got $15, I'd go to Williamsburg,'' said Shirley who turns 75 this month. The three deer were the first things I bought.
``I own half of Williamsburg Pottery,'' she added.
That's easy to believe. Everywhere you look in the yard you see another piece of stone pottery. There are at least 15 pagodas (all wired for lights) scattered about the yard. On a lark, she built one pagoda with upside down birdbaths.
There is a statue of a couple with an umbrella by a pool in the rock garden. It's a fountain. Water (piped in by Mack) comes out of the umbrella and rains down on the couple. The pool is surrounded by concrete frogs while seven stone rabbits frolic to the side.
Williamsburg Pottery also was the provider of furnishings for Shirley's mini gardens, which range from a Buddha garden to her latest creation, an angel garden where a sign says, ``Gardening Angel On Duty.'' Little stone cherubs are perched about and each has what looks like colorful little ribbons around the neck.
``They looked so naked I put telephone wire around their necks,'' she said.
Once Shirley bought a large Oriental light from a Chinese restaurant. Mack wired it and hung it from a tree. Underneath is a cluster of stone mushrooms and three bright green stone frogs.
Other frills in the yard include plastic birds in bird cages hanging from tree limbs. ``Shirley's Coconut Grove,'' sign and all, features coconuts, also hanging from tree limbs. Epiphytes are growing in each coconut.
The sign was a gift from a friend. Friends often give yard gifts to the Todds. One of their anniversary presents was a stone plaque that reads: ``One is nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth.'' Other anniversary gifts included wind chimes and a new wooden swing for the yard.
Late in August, Shirley started 310 azaleas in her rooting bed. She will use them to fill in wherever needed on the property and also to help her two sons and daughter, Barbara Murray (who got married under the Japanese gate), with their landscaping.
The next project is dealing with a big pile of stepping stones down by the water. Shirley Todd is not sure what they will do with them.
``We just bought them,'' she said, ``Well - they were only a buck apiece and chipped a little bit.''
Before that effort begins, Mack has to finish shellacking the new swing, which he is going to use to replace a swing that had rotted out down by the water.
``Everything I've got is getting old,'' he said, laughing and giving Shirley a little hug.
But getting old doesn't deter the Todds.
``We'd both like to die with our boots on,'' Shirley said.
And with another project ready to go in the garden. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
HOW THERE GARDEN GROWS
[Color Photo]
A statue of Buddha graces one of Shirley Todd's mini-gardens in the
Oriental theme.
Down by the water is a round Chinese moon gate that features iron
bars from the Portsmouth jail. Nearby is also a Japanese gate.
Staff photos by CHARLIE MEADS
The Todds - Mack and Shirley - recently marked their 50th wedding
anniversary. Here, they stand on the Oriental humpback bridge, under
which water flows to the teahouse waterwheel.
There are at least 15 pagodas (all wired for lights) scattered about
the yard. On a lark, one was built with upside down birdbaths.
ABOVE: At the end of the lane leading to the house, visitors are
greeted by several concrete deer, painted brown and with green glass
eyes. They are partially concealed by foliage. What wasn't built by
Mack Todd, Shirley Todd purchased from the Pottery Factory in
Williamsburg. ``Every time I got $15, I'd go to Williamsburg,'' said
Shirley. ``The three deer were the first things I bought.''
RIGHT: Little stone cherubs are perched about in the ``angel
garden.''
Staff photos
by CHARLIE MEADS
by CNB