The Georgia governor’s mansion has a new, water-efficient front garden designed by The Fockele Garden Company.
The effort was organized and sponsored by the Georgia Green Industry Association.
Mark Fockele was selected to provide the design for the garden at the front of the governor’s residence on West Paces Ferry Road in Atlanta. In addition to the garden’s design plans, The Fockele Garden Company was one of several companies that donated plants and labor for the installation of more than 1,100 plants.
“We created this landscape garden to demonstrate the fact that we could have beautiful, lush gardens even with very limited water,” Fockele said. “It is all in the technique: Proper soil preparation, drip irrigation, limited turf, appropriate mulching, grouping plants by water requirements, creating shade, and most important of all, proper plant selection.”
An exterior renovation project was recently completed at the Governor’s Mansion, leaving the need for new landscaping. The GGIA had been looking for a project where its members could showcase the value and the benefits of the industry’s management and irrigation practices and Gov. Sonny Perdue agreed that the mansion was the perfect place to present good landscape management practices to the rest of the state.
“The governor’s mansion is now a showplace for water conservation,” Perdue said. “The garden will be a lasting testament to the environmental benefits and beauty that a properly designed and efficient landscape can bring to all Georgians.”
Fockele’s design includes a wide variety of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, annuals and perennials. Many of the plants are native to Georgia. Fockele designed a garden that blends with the scale of the residence while using plants which once established would need very little watering, if any.
“This is a living example for not only creating a beautiful landscape to showcase Georgia grown products, but doing so while using minimal water resources,” GGIA Executive Director Sherry Loudermilk said.