Beautification Awards

No one is more deserving of the beautification award than a woman who has been working on her garden for the better part of a century. Louise Wisecarver lives on a beautiful farm in Whitesburg and her flowers will warm your heart almost as much as she will. “My mom did, so it’s in my blood,” Louise said of her love for gardening, which she’s cultivated on her Whitesburg farm for 65 years. At 89 years old, she feels just as alive in her garden as she did in her twenties. ouise has a story for every flower and each piece of art found around her property. The yard art is truly her history. The corner of the house has an original well bucket with petunias hung by the pulley system. There is also an old shovel hanging from the brick on her house that serves as a hanger for their address sign. A tuft of zinnias, her favorite flower, surrounds a quaint birdhouse made by her husband out of old wood and a horse hitching post. It’s a walk down memory lane. Louise and her late husband Coy met in high school and moved to the farm in 1959. They were married for 68 years. They farmed black angus cattle, tobacco and hay as well as hogs for Lays Packing company while working other day jobs. Coy served in the Army and worked for BASF for 37 and a half years and in 1967, Louise became the first female mail carrier in Hamblen County. She loved what she did and the people she met on her route until she retired in 1998. “No rhyme or reason about what I do. If I plant something somewhere and it does well, I leave it,” Louise said. She loves to move and transplant her flowers and collect their seeds. Every spring Louise starts some of her flowers from seeds that she collected the previous summer in her beautiful sunroom. When it is warm enough, she takes her geraniums back outside after bringing them in for the winter. She then gathers her daughters and drives out to her favorite nurseries. At first, she just browses and gets ideas, and then returns to make her final decisions. No flower is a stranger to her, but she loves seeking out new species. Think of any flower, and Louise probably has it — cone flowers, geraniums, shasta daisies, marigolds, lilies, roses, black-eyed Susans, petunias, irises, begonias — the list goes on and on. Even rare flowers, like the spider flower of the naked lady, are among the blossoms. She’s branched out into growing pineapples, cotton and a Chinese lantern, even re-blooming a poinsettia. Louise loves to take care of her gardens and is adamant that she does not need help. She waters early in the morning and late at night with a hose from the well. Every night when she’s hitting the hay, she lets her three daughters know that she’s heading in. Her daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren, who all live within a mile of her and share her love for the land of gardening, have taken over the farming duties. There is an overwhelming feeling of love amongst Louise’s family, who nominated her themselves for this award. From the words of her grandson: “She could plant a tire, and it would come up as a flower!”