Her Gardening Reputation Is Blooming in Suwanee

Rosalie Tubre doesn't just have a plot at Harvest Farm, Suwanee's popular community garden. To many, she is the community garden.

Her volunteer efforts go back to the park's beginning. Her design help is evident in several areas. And now, a nearby city is tapping her efforts.

She was a natural to start things off in Suwanee, because her gardening goes back 30 years. A former New Orleans resident, she studied landscape design at LSU and horticulture at Southwestern Louisiana. "If I had it to do all over, I'd be a landscape architect," she said.

She and her husband moved to Suwanee in 2007, when their business failed. They sold food to New Orleans' storied restaurant industry, which went belly up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "We knew all the top chefs," she recalled. (The "N'awlins" accent is still evident.)

The Master Gardener certificate came in 2008, then she was the first chairperson of the Harvest Farm Managing Board when the garden opened in 2009. "Over 200 people showed up" at the outset, with each board member overseeing certain sections of the garden. She noted that part of Master Gardener certification requires volunteering in the community.

Tubre kept on, teaching a Junior Master Gardener class to special education students at Peachtree Ridge High. "They were into it," she said of the students; so much so that the group won a national award, which she accepted on their behalf. And not only that, the class' plot fared so well that "they made strawberry pies."

Word gets around, so now Tubre is teaching a gardening class at White Oak Elementary in Sugar Hill. Six raised beds measuring 4 feet by 20 feet are visible from the classroom, she noted. Planting began in the fall, and crops include radishes, lettuce, spinach and garlic.

She's bringing her Suwanee touch there: She plans a butterfly garden in Sugar Hill, similar to the one she designed in Suwanee, to pollinate the plants. Also, there will be a cistern, but the one in Sugar Hill will have underground outlets to the plants. In Suwanee, gardeners have to draw the water from the cistern by hand.

Tubre is excited about Earth Day (April 21), which will bring a fund raiser for the Sugar Hill garden to E.E. Robinson Park.

But it's not just about plants with her. She recently helped design what will be a sitting area at White Street Park, working with Public Works employees. The slope to the creek was eroding, so the crew shored it up and flattened it out. Eventually, benches or swings will be there.

And she also had Public Works erect an arbor on the walkway toward the small amphitheater at the rear of the park. Star jasmine has been planted, which will eventually grow over the top of the arbor in picturesque fashion.

And the open space at the rear of the park, which now has only azaleas, eventually will see dogwoods planted on Arbor Day.

It's all the perfect outlet for Tubre, whose home gardening efforts are limited by her homeowners association.

"I love being outdoors," she said.