The Vision of The Mississippi Renaissance Garden

The Vision

Martha Sanderson Boyce is Founder and Executive Director
of the
Mississippi Renaissance Garden Foundation, Inc.

Martha had a vision for a garden that began as a tiny seed in 1998 when she went through a life changing trauma. An accident caused the loss of her right foot and ultimately her job as a teacher. That incident changed her life as she knew it. After spending a year in a wheelchair, she was able to walk. Not long afterwards, she became the caregiver of her 92 year old mother. Her mother wanted to be able to look out of her windows into a garden, so Martha and her husband built a house where she designed such a garden for her mother. Together they enjoyed the garden for only six months before Martha lost her mother. After that, in 2003, the garden became a memorial to her.
Martha continued planting and designing the garden, this time to accommodate her wheelchair. In doing so, she found that her grief and pain begin to diminish. She became aware of its healing powers of her garden retreat.

Martha's pain gradually lessened as she worked in the garden, all the while creating a beautiful place she could go to meditate and become renewed. She recognized the benefits of the beauty of nature, and how beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers can uplift the heart and heal the soul.
One of her greatest pleasures became sharing her garden with others.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, virtually everything was wiped out within a two-block radius of the coastline. Beyond that, there was tremendous devastation, for everyone on the Mississippi Gulf and many miles inshore was affected. Thousands of people were left with nothing but a slab. Later the slabs were broken up and hauled away, leaving nothing but bard ground. Houses and businesses were destroyed, lives were lost, vehicles were ruined, and everything that people owned was taken away. Along with these losses, the beauty of the area gone.
The earth as people here knew it was brown and desolate. The once beautiful southern landscape and gardens that had provided beauty to so many residents and visitors were now gone - either washed away or rendered brown due to the salt water surge, and/or stripped bare of leaves and flowers because of hurricane force winds. Ancient oaks and other trees were uprooted or severely damaged, leaving miles of empty landscapes. The effects of the devastation are still being revealed as our heritage oaks that were hundreds of years old are still dying due to lack of water, lack of nutrients that were scraped away by debris clearing machinery, and because they were crushed by heavy equipment. Landscaping, flowers, and green grass were replaced by broken concrete, hunks of roofing that lay everywhere, and barren dirt and weeds that flourished and took over everything.

Martha's home and garden were far enough inland to be spared by Katrina, but she felt the pain of others who were not so lucky. Knowing the comfort and renewal that she experienced in the mist of her own garden, she began to have a vision. In the fall of 2005, her vision began to take room and is now growing into a reality.
She visualized a garden that would give the people of Mississippi a place to go to be renewed and healed, much in the say way as her small backyard garden helped her to heal after the death of her mother.

In her vision, the garden will be a memorial to loved ones lost in the hurricane as well as a tribute to all the selfless people who came to help plan and rebuild our coastal area and to all of the heroes who worked tirelessly to rescue survivors. The garden would be called The Mississippi Renaissance Garden, modeled after the Reviving the Renaissance Plan that was drafted to revive the Gulf Coast.
Martha went to work to spread her garden idea and never took "No" for an answer. She contacted area media, attended recovery meetings, joined Renaissance Recovery committees, attended home and garden shows with a little booth she set up to distribute information and beg for volunteers. She made endless phone calls and wrote countless e-mails to anyone she thought might be able to help. Her hard work paid off, because, like the Pied Piper, people believed in her dream and followed her. She and a small band of believers formed a core of people who were dedicated to helping her bring her vision to reality. In the summer of 2006, a corporation was formed, and a board elected. Experts in various fields and community leaders volunteered to be on her advisory board. Nonprofit status was applied for from the IRS. She and members of the board got busy with plans and designs for a garden that is yet to be, and they got involved with other organizations to help save and replant the oak trees, start community gardens, and make their goals known throughout the Gulf Coast.

She never gave up on the dream that there would one day be a public garden for the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

As of this moment, Martha and her board are working to make the garden a reality. Many others from all over the United States have pledged to help.

The vision is great, and so is the movement.

Martha believes that God has brought special people to this "Horticulture for Humanity"movement who have unknowing spent their lives preparing to work to make this project a reality. Each one seems to have brought to this project the necessary and varied talents and skills to make the garden a reality.

Status of the Garden: