Dr. Stone’s family home and garden can be found on Sycamore Ave in the Historic Edgemount District. I rang the doorbell to ask permission to take a few photographs of the exterior of the house and gardens. A lovely gentleman, Mr. James R. Davis, husband of Lorraine Davis, answered the door and joined me outside for a few minutes. He was gracious to allow me to roam on my own. I felt privileged to stand quietly looking over the handsome brick garden wall, imagining Dr. Stone as he designed and created the beautiful space. I’m a gardener; it was not difficult to understand the hours he spent planting, watering and weeding the extensive borders I found. A garden matures, the editing begins, moving plants, replacing things that aren’t happy. Year after year, adding bulbs and the “must have” plants you find in the nursery. A garden thrives when it is shared. There was never a fancy sign that said, “The Garden is Open Today.” Difficult to see, Dr. Stone would take a fountain pen and write on a scrap of paper, “Garden Open for Viewing.” People remember the garden and the flowers he took to the office. Today, the house that once belonged to Dr. Stone is being lovingly cared for; how pleased he would be.
Dr. Stone Sitting in The Rose Garden
“A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space — a place not just set apart but reverberant — and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.”
Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
Main Street Rocky Mount 
Excellent. Thanks for the series.
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