East

Plant People

By Jenks Farmer

“I could claim that it started with my father who, while working on the railroad, had an ongoing quest to find the kind of falling-down old farmstead that he’d been raised on in the 1930s and 40s. I remember two things about riding through the country with him when we were young and lived in a little brick ranch-style house. One was that if a train was anywhere to be seen for miles, instead of speeding up to get over the tracks, he would stop, turn off the truck, get out, wait, and watch the train pass. As it roared by, he’d explain what every single railroad car label and insignia meant.”—Jenks Farmer

“Guard: Halt! Who goes there? King Arthur: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England! Guard: Pull the other one! King Arthur: I am, and this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master. Guard: What? Ridden on a horse? King Arthur: Yes! Guard: You’re using coconuts! King Arthur: What? Guard: You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ‘em together!”―Monty Python and the Holy Grail

COLUMBIA South Carolina—(Hubris)—September/October 2025—I could claim that it started with my father who, while working on the railroad, had an ongoing quest to find the kind of falling-down old farmstead that he’d been raised on in the 1930s and 40s. I remember two things about riding through the country with him when we were young and lived in a little brick ranch-style house. One was that if a train was anywhere to be seen for miles, instead of speeding up to get over the tracks, he would stop, turn off the truck, get out, wait, and watch the train pass. As it roared by, he’d explain what every single railroad car label and insignia meant.

When we finally got to go again, if he saw a falling-down farmhouse that looked like it might have lost its loving owner, he’d stop, wander around, and ask the neighboring farmers if the place could be bought. He finally found that place, but his love of a grand quest never died. Years later, I made him watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and that serious and conservative man laughed out loud for two hours.

A while back, some friends who once worked for Southern Living came by to visit and gave me a bundle of very good advice about creating a cover for my new book. They presented me with a very exciting and seemingly easy project. Easy-peasey!

At the time, it seemed easy. I started with the simple parts. But my paying work got busy. The hard parts got put off. I let them slide till the very last moment. And a mere four days before my deadline (for this exciting project), I found myself with a difficult quest: acquire a dead palmetto tree.

At my first stop, I made the first two mistakes. I could’ve ended it all there. I’ve been eyeing a place along Highway 17 South. It was just a dirt yard with a bunch of giant racks made out of telephone poles, a couple of piles of gravel and topsoil, and a spray-painted sign that read, “Palms 4 Sale.” You’ve probably noticed these places popping up over the past couple of years. Anyone with the skills to make a giant rack out of telephone poles and the cell phone to call the wholesale palm dealer in Florida has jumped on the bandwagon. You can make a pile re-selling palms.

At this first stop, there was a tiny little plywood hut with an air conditioner and a Mexican-looking guy. My first mistake was jumping right into my need rather than chatting the guy up. I’m Southern, so I know how important and fun small talk can be. But I jumped out of my truck and said in my bad Spanish, “I’d like to buy your dead palmetto.”

He looked befuddled. Was my Spanish so terrible? I pointed, and he chuckled and said in a deep PeeDee country boy accent, “That palm ain’t dead.”

I don’t claim to know everything about palms, though I’ve planted a thousand, or two, but I wondered if he knew something about palm resurrections that I didn’t. Then he said, “OK, two hundred dollars for that one.”

Highway robbery, I thought, and I also thought there are plenty of dead palms out there. Mistake number two. I should’ve just loaded the thing up, forked out the cash, and been done with it.

A few days later, on 521 North near Santee, I saw an older lady in her yard with several palmetto trees planted in a row and one deader than a doornail. Since she was out there gardening and I happened to have a truckload of plants, I thought we’d make a connection. She’d get rid of a dead tree, and I’d get my palmetto. I’d learned my lesson about chatting. So I did some of that and even gave her a six-pack of pink zinnias that I had floating around in the truck, then finally got around to asking my question. She slid her clippers into her smock pocket and said, “Well, that would be just fine. But today’s not the day for it.”

My heart sank.

I knew better than to argue with this lady, who might have been on her way to get a perm or expecting grandchildren to show up for finger painting.

So I got in the truck and left, knowing I wouldn’t be back this way soon enough. What was the deal with today? What did she know? What did she feel? I decided that, like my Momma, she was living at a different pace from me and I had to respect her not feeling the urgency that I felt.

But I had a deadline. There were only three days left to get this dead-palm project done. I’ll tell you more about it, but not yet. Y’all just need to understand that I needed a specific-looking dead palmetto; one that looked kind of wild, like it was from a wooded island, with the old leaf stalks still attached—boots, we call those in the trade. I needed one that wasn’t too oddly shaped and I needed a dead palm that would pretty much stand straight up with just a little bit of help. We would have a tractor, so it couldn’t be too big.

With just two days left, I decided to do what I should’ve done in the first place. I’d have to make the sacrifice of dollars and buy a palmetto. By now, I was working inland, near Aiken, so I went to Google and found two places nearby that sold palmettos. At the first one, there was no person there; just a sign that said call for palm trees $400. The farther you get inland, the more palm trees cost. No one answered my call.

There’s another thing about going inland. It seems that people here want the resort look. That’s what I call palms that have been stripped of all of their boots. They look fresh and polished like something from a Caribbean resort. It seems that as you go inland, people like that look. That just didn’t work for my project and if I was gonna pay, I wasn’t paying for the Sandals resort style.

On the morning of my last day, I had to work for a client, so I lost half the day for my quest. But I’d recalled a place where I’d stopped two years before, way out in the country near Neeces, South Carolina. It was called Yellow Wagon Plants. I’d had long chats with the owner, a beautiful 80-something-year-old woman with golden blonde hair piled elegantly on top of her head, lots of rings and diamonds, but obviously a hard worker. Not only was she selling palms, she had hanging baskets of flowers as well as frozen peas, okra, and tomatoes that she’d put up herself. I knew that she’d understand my ridiculous quest and have lots and lots of options. I found her crumpled card way down in my wallet. 

I dreaded making the trip alone since I’ve been driving so much lately. Also, it’s true what a friend says about me, I sometimes like being a passenger princess. I asked one of the young guys who works on our farm if he wanted to go. “It’ll be a good chance for you to learn how to drive the truck and trailer when it’s weighted down with a couple thousand pounds of palm tree,” I said, disingenuously, trailer driving being a very important skill for young men to acquire, in my world. He knew this was a Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence proposal, but he finally agreed. 

Jesse, with his floppy Gilligan’s Island hat and dirty T-shirt with the sleeves rolled all the way up, took the wheel for our 45-minute drive. Jesse’s from the city so country jaunts intrigue him. When we drive country roads, he’ll look around at those isolated rural houses and say, “I just want to know what these people do?” He’s genuinely curious what rural folks do for work. And entertainment. Jesse is a writer, so he wants to know the stories of rural people, but today he was focused on built things. We passed a little tan bar that maybe hadn’t been open in ten years or maybe had been open last night and he wanted to know, “Who hangs out there? Is it a happy hour or late-night spot?” Today, he was noticing building styles so he said, “What is that building even made from? It’s not brick, it’s not wood . . .”

I let him contemplate while I focused on my quest. I ignored the construction question and said, “Jesse, do you think it would be wrong if I have to buy a living palmetto tree, chop it up, and kill it?”

Jesse said, “I would follow Krishna’s words. Understand that it may be part of the cosmic process, you have to do what you have to do, but you just shouldn’t profit from it.”

Which didn’t help at all because I was definitely planning on profiting from this top-secret dead palmetto endeavor.

We passed a little cemetery at the top of the hill with everyone’s stones in very straight lines. I explained that they were properly buried with everyone facing East.

Not having a country-Christian education, he had no idea what I was talking about so I explained that people should be buried facing East so that, on the morning of the return of the Lord, they’ll be able to rise up to face the dawn and the Christ.

A new building caught his eye. At the bottom of the hill a sprawling blue lake and pasture balanced an unpainted barn-like hull. It was built halfway on land and halfway over water. Jesse said, “Look at that. I’m pretty sure that’s where Tom Sawyer ran away to.” We both agreed that in our fantasies, we’d live there.

We were just about tired of Highway 4 East and the truck and trailer bouncing when Googlemaps interrupted our music to say, “In 400 feet, you’ll arrive at your destination.”  We found ourselves at the caution light; The Yellow Wagon plants and palm yard. I expected to see my old acquaintance.

I jumped out of the truck, and what I saw was perfect. Slim, straight, and booted, it was the most perfect dead palmetto tree ever. It leaned on one of those giant telephone pole racks, seductive as Farrah Fawcett on her swimsuit poster. My dead palm!

Instead of my old friend, though, the woman who came up to help me was a Latina woman who didn’t speak English. I did my chit-chat in Spanish, but then I said I would like to buy the dead palm. She rolled her eyes, not knowing how to deal with this, and pulled out the owner’s card, “Call,” she said. The card was the same as the one I’d fished out earlier but there was a surprise: a man’s name. Same last name but this card was for a man. So I asked in my terrible Spanish, “How is she?” The woman smiled but didn’t say anything, so I called the number on the card.

A man with a strong Southern accent answered, and I explained my situation and described the dead palm. His first words were, “That palm is not dead.”

Instead of arguing this time I asked if he had any dead ones. “Of course I do. You drove by two when you entered. I have any kind of palm you want. My dead palms are running $700 these days.”

I’ve been around old Southern men long enough to know that they like to throw out wild statements just to make you think. They particularly like a quick-witted, challenging but not disrespectful answer, so I said, “Well, since they’re on sale, I’ll take three.”

He laughed and said, “I’ll be there in 5 minutes and I’ll help you anyway I can.”

I expected a diesel pick-up, but a black Rolls-Royce pulled up. A big man got out, talking business on the phone. He looked about 70 but built like a football player. There were two odd things. He wore what looked like a brown Boy Scout uniform; shorts and a matching shirt. And, he had a massive red beard streaked in gray, in which a tiny, well-groomed dog about the same color as his beard, snuggled. He let it down to come greet us, I noticed it wore a red “service dog” tag.

When he got off the phone, I told him I’d known his wife and that my Momma had too. He looked down, but said resolutely, “We lost her last year.”

Since it was baking hot Jesse had run across the highway to a big truck stop and got us all a couple of drinks. The burly man handed me the keys to his skid steer and said, “Get on that tractor and follow me, son.” Which I did. Jesse came back just in time to help strap one of the dead palms, that we’d missed seeing when we pulled in, onto the tractor lift. The loading was smooth sailing until the last minute. The palm dangled over my trailer and broke in half.

“Not surprising,” said our benefactor. “It’s dead. It was rotten in the middle so it folds up like a wet paper towel. Do you want the other one?”

I hesitated. I’m not sure why, but I was kind of dazed. It was hot. I had a deadline. I’d just got news of the death of an acquaintance. On top of that, this other dead palm was perfect in every way except it was huge; it’d be hard to handle when we got home. I wasn’t sure we could stand it up. So, I hesitated.

Finally, we found our dead palmettos beside a dumpster on Highway 4 East. 

Young Jesse didn’t miss a beat, “We definitely want the other one. We’ve come all this way.” The bearded man looked at me, sitting up on the tractor, and said, “Get off that tractor, son. You’ll learn to drive it but, right now, I’ll load this one up for you a lot faster than you will.”

I stepped back and watched as he and Jesse loaded that big old booted palmetto and had a vision of it standing, facing east, catching the rising sun.

Early the next morning, with the holy grail, the dead palmetto, still strapped to the trailer, our whole crew showed up to bring to life the vision that my Southern Living friends envisioned. Behind the scenes of all those glossy photos of gardens, things aren’t always easy or pretty. In fact, my top secret dream, the entire reconnaissance trip that I’ve described today as a grandiose quest, was based on nothing more than this: something that looked like a kid’s crayon drawing. What you see below isn’t anything near what I saw in my head, the image that would become the cover of my new book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Southern Living friends had inspired a vision. I could see the cover of the book though I couldn’t draw it very well.

But even many young backs and lots of muscle couldn’t make this dead palmetto tree rise to greet the morning sun. One of the young guys stopped us, put his hands on his hips and said, “I think we need to use our knowledge of physics.” 

“You’re computer science major! What do you know about physics?” I said. “What’s your plan?” 

“I wrestled in high school. That’s all about physics. Do you have a big pulley?” he said as he started to set up a huge tri-pod. 

The massive dead palmetto rose, facing west. That was actually part of my vision, well, my photographer’s vision, that would come into play later. For the rest of the day, we resurrected the palmetto. Leaves got screwed on. Moss zip-tied in. At the base, flowering hydrangeas in pots were half buried, lilies stuck in, cast iron plant leaves bundled and grew from once bare ground.  We scattered mown grass clippings to create grass. 

At 6 p.m., Mark, our photographer, showed up. He wanted the evening light, the last of the golden hour light, horizontal and soft, now flowing from the west, eastward to light our garden. In the last few minutes of the day, Mark set up various cameras and brought the vision to life. 

Our simulated garden would become the cover of a new book, Secrets of Southern Gardens. When the photographer’s image popped up on my laptop, I was more than satisfied—I was thrilled. In accepting the challenge of a quest as ridiculous and fun as a Monty Python movie, we’d made something totally fake look amazingly real and authentic: a dead palm, cut flowers, potted plants in a garden I could have simply grown if I’d had the patience, and time, nestled in front of Daddy’s barn.