Home and Garden

Are the stacks of paper, mail and magazines taking over your home?

Do you trip over the kids’ toys or someone’s shoes every time you enter a room?

Often this seems like a typical environment of a busy family, but it can create stress and frustration.

Clearing the clutter and organizing your home is the key to having more time to relax and enjoy time with your family.

As spring-cleaning begins, it is smart to look at each area of your home to see what needs to be re-evaluated for better efficiency and organization. There are a few helpful hints to make sure you avoid feeling overwhelmed with this project.

IT WOULDN’T BE SPRING IN BEAUFORT WITHOUT St. Helena Episcopal Church’s annual Spring Tour of Homes. Known as a showcase of the historic city’s antebellum homes, the tour started in 1956 to help raise funds for a new parish house.

Fifty-three years later, the tour has become a community tradition and often attracts visitors from all over North America, said Reneé Killian-Dawson, tour chairwoman.

“We are blessed to have so many historic homes in the area — many surviving before the war of the states,” said Killian-Dawson, an interior designer and a historian. “We have a lot of civic pride. People from all over the place love these homes.”

Musings on what it’s all about — for those who dig it.

Although it amounts to preaching to the choir, herewith a compendium of thoughts from gardeners who seem to grasp what it’s all about. Let us all get psyched up for the coming garden year!

If some expressions resonate more than others with various reader/gardeners, all contain a seed of reality, expressed poetically or more pragmatically. So, why garden? It is tempting to simply say that one gardens because he/she can’t help it. Is it genetic? Sometimes yea, sometimes nay. Well, what is the sweet mystery

then? Here follow several observations of devotees from the recent and distant past.  "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Who had the nerve to make such a bald pronouncement? Why, Cicero of course.

Nearby gardens meet great expectations.

The best New Year’s resolution you could possibly make for 2009 is to plan a trip, or several, to visit some of the outstanding gardens available within a day’s drive from Hilton Head Island.

These include three of the most renowned public gardens, not only in the Southeast, but in the entire country.

This is not to recommend a one-day round trip, because an overnight stay is necessary to fully enjoy the experience, although you can easily reach your destination in a day.

Users of Beaufort County’s popular Real Property Lookup and Real and Personal Tax Payment Web site pages are in for big changes with new state-of-the-art tax and appraisal software.

Property Max and Collect Max replaced the county’s property research and tax payment services. Both are powered by Manatron, a national company used by many government property tax and assessment ofces.

Put a modern twist to your traditional holiday decor.

By now, you’ve likely pulled dusty boxes of half-broken ornaments, partially used candles, tangled twinkling lights and themed tablecloths from the bowels of your closet. But before you deck your house in holiday splendor, reconsider the décor of old. The impending New Year marks a fresh take to tradition, according to Carmen Natschke of Decorating Diva, an online home design resource.

“As with all things décor, the basics will always have a strong influence,” she said. “I don’t see a significant down trend in traditional holiday color usage. What I do see is a fusion of traditional color basics and trendy color newcomers, such as pink, robin’s egg blue, sage, chocolate and other 2008 color favorites.”

'Tis the time of year for reflection while we can still remember what was a success or failure, what was a wonderful surprise or what was a disappointment.

Then in January we can face forward confidently with a little background information to help us make every month and year in the garden more satisfying than the last. Isn’t that the goal after all, as Katharine White famously wrote in “Onward and Upward in the Garden”? A short list of standouts from the year just past would have to include “Knockout” roses, the new shrub rose and glamour girl of the rose community.

The colors are indeed “knockout,” breathtaking in their floriferous beauty Almost everything about them as promised in catalogues is true - that is, resistance to powdery mildew, blackspot, rust, Japanese beetles, leafhoppers, rose midge, drought, humidity and everything else the Lowcountry can throw at them, (except deer).

Well-traveled homeowners bring worldly perspective to Berkeley Hall.

The home of Suzanne and Frank Grohowski is nestled in a cul-de-sac in stately Berkeley Hall. This fascinating couple had a home in Sea Pines for many years and, when it came time to make a change, Berkeley Hall captured Frank and Suzanne’s attention due to its beauty, elegance and magnificent home sites.

“We wanted to build a home that reflected our lifestyle and personalities”, said Suzanne. “We have been fortunate to have traveled extensively and collected both art work and other treasures along the way. We really wanted to build our home in a manner that would allow us to share our life and travels with friends and family.”

A Mediterranean, yet distinctly American home is the net result. Rich warm tones of winter wheat and cinnamon combine beautifully to set off textured fabrics, comfortable furniture and impeccable taste creating a relaxed, refined and quiet luxury throughout this home, the perfect venue for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.