Private Quarters: Fred and Rebecca Pinckney

Home and Garden

For years, Rebecca Pinckney collected ideas and photos about the plants, trees and design for the woodland garden she hoped to create in her Sandy Springs home. Fred, Rebecca's husband, is an attorney and arbitrator; Rebecca is a retired teacher, and a Fulton County master gardener and an officer of the Chattahoochee Unit of The Herb Society of America.

When she retired in 2007, Pinckney focused full-time on her horticulture at home.

Favorite design feature: At Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania, the couple was inspired to use a millstone as a feature in the garden. Their millstone was purchased from Henry Hine (millstones.com) at the Scott Antique Market.

What’s in the garden: More than 75 trees, cut flowers, shrubs, vines, ground cover and herbs, connected via stone and natural paths. One of the trees has a connection to their last name -- a Georgia fever bark called “Pinckneya”.

Pinckney and her husband Fred, who celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year, also added a resistance pool under an open-air pavilion, dramatically changing their backyard.

They added onto the house to accommodate the SwimEx pool, a resistance swimming pool for exercise. A paddlewheel generates a counter-current in the pool. The couple saw the pool while visiting Boston and wanted the pool to be part of a second-level pavilion overlooking the garden, a style that reminded them of trips to Bermuda.

Rebecca's garden workshop, located underneath the pool.

Designing the garden: The couple took trips to other gardens to get ideas and even plans for their garden. At Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, the architects shared their trellis design, which the Pinckneys used for a custom-made curved arbor trellis with a seating area within the woodland garden.

Why a woodland garden: The property, nearly three-quarters of an acre, has more sun in the front than in the backyard and has old hardwood trees in the backyard, Rebecca said. “Prior to it being a woodland garden, it was a dog run. So all of that fencing was eventually pulled out and taken away and discarded,” she said. “That part of the yard was graded and the path was laid. From there, we started filling in the landscape, trees and shrubbery.”

The garden is full of Rebecca's personal touches. like this clay statue that sits in front of her collection of plants.

A rain barrel collects water for the part of the garden she calls her nursery area. Some of those flowers are ones she uses to sell at the Roswell Farmer's Market.

The Pinckneys' garden is "intended to be a place where you can just come and sit and rest and enjoy the beauty of nature,” Rebecca says.

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For years, Rebecca Pinckney collected ideas and photos about the plants, trees and design for the woodland garden she hoped to create in her Sandy Springs home. Fred, Rebecca's husband, is an attorney and arbitrator; Rebecca is a retired teacher, and a Fulton County master gardener and an officer of the Chattahoochee Unit of The Herb Society of America.

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