Wild Ones Greater Baton Rouge

Jess Cole’s Sweet Spot of Earth in West Feliciana Earns LCHP Gold!

By Peggy Coates

Jess Cole occupies a seven-acre sweet spot of earth in “Happy Land” (West Feliciana) along Barrow Creek in the Tunica steep hills that includes a 1/4 acre curated sun-loving native plant garden around her home. Jess is a horticulturist, owner of Sweet Fern Landscapes that specializes in ecologically driven and native plant-focused design. Jess is the columnist for Country Roads Magazine's garden column "Our Sustainable Garden" . She is a Master Naturalist of Greater Baton Rouge and one of the founding members of Louisiana Wild Society, a non-profit that works with local community organizations to put in educational native plantings in public spaces.

Originally, Jess nurtured a full-shade garden around her home that she could enjoy as she stepped onto and off of the porches that surround her home. Disaster struck in 2024! A tornado moved across her property, downing large trees in its path around her home. After this catastrophic event and loss of the robust tree canopy, Jess had to begin a dramatic redesign of the garden space that would now include a plant palette of native sun-loving plants.

The structural layout of the new garden design includes a gravel and limestone pathway edged with natural stone that meanders through the garden space. The pathway leads to several garden rooms that include outdoor furnishings and a fire pit. Within the garden beds, Jess allowed native plants to naturally grow in and reseed. She soon learned how prolifically ironweed, boneset, clasping cone flower, and sycamore trees can naturally occupy a growing space. The remaining 75% of the native plants were intenitally planted.

As one walks the pathway, you are surrounded by native plant forms of various heights, textures, and colorful blooms. Native shrubs and trees anchor the space and provide a backdrop for perennials. Shrubs include the American beautyberry, Virginia Sweetspire, turk’s cap, and elderberry, which Jess prunes into a tree form. Some of her favorite perennials include native mallows, white wild indigo, giant coneflower, ashy sunflower, purple coneflowers, obedient plant, rattlesnake master, and Stokes’ aster. Frog fruit grows on the ground plane as an edge plant in places. Maypop vines twine in and out of plants and are bursting out with blooms. The coneflowers show signs of browsing by the local deer population. The turk’s cap shrubs have skeletionized leaves that indicate the large population of larval stage insects in the garden.

Jess is saying goodbye to this amazing property soon, moving to a large tract of land in Folsom where she will turn her attention to growing full time with an emphasis on woody native plants. Her love for native trees partially began with her friendship with Christoper Copper, Baton Rouge Green Director of Operations and lead arborist, whom she met in a class while attending LSU, as well as her time on the Parks and Recreation Board for the City of Mandeville. We can’t wait to see all the many ways Jess will continue to promote restoration and planting of natives species, as she begins a new chapter in her life.

Congratulations, Jess on achieving Gold Level LCHP Certification for your garden in West Feliciana! Keep up the great work you do in our communities!

Charles and Virginia Yarbrough’s Woodland Garden Earns LCHP Gold!

By Peggy Coates

As a 35-year labor of love for Charles and Virginia Yarbrough, their exquisite shade garden was created in a beech-magnolia forest on two adjoining lots in the Lake at White Oak subdivision in Baton Rouge. It is a green oasis in the city with a unique woodland landscape that contains both native and exotic plant species. Designed with a Japanese stroll garden in mind, the garden leads its visitors along long stretches of moss-covered paths into a variety of garden “rooms.” Visitors can wander among the native trees, over bridges, through pergolas, and by the lake.


Charles, a retired R&D chemist with Exxon-Mobil and a EBR Master Gardener, designed the oriental-inspired garden on a 3-acre property by “wandering around the site and letting the landscape suggest the next step.” His visits to Japanese gardens on the West Coast were a key source of inspiration, and his garden’s style was also influenced by an LSU extension course extolling curved paths and hidden destinations.


However, Charles never made drawings to work from. Instead, by combining his love of visual art and nature with his skill as a woodworker and carpenter, he gradually developed a series of garden features: a boardwalk, a gazebo, curved bridges, arbors, and pergolas. He also brought in rocks, bricks, stones, ironwork, and sculptures to enhance his design vision, and expanded the plant palette by adding native and other shade-tolerant plants to “foster a native environment while incorporating beautiful and suitable plant selections from around the world.” As Charles suggests, “First, build a bridge or a pergola or another garden feature, and the path to it will become obvious. Then, add plantings to create the desired mood, and allow nature itself to decide your next step.”


Along with Charles, his wife Virginia has a life-long appreciation for native plants. While living in Oregon, she discovered the western white trillium that blooms pure white and then transitions to deep red as it ages, acting as a signal to pollinators. Growing up in the Chicago area, she explored the forest preserves designed by Daniel Burnham in his 1909 Plan for Chicago, where native mayapples blanket the forest floor in early May. Inspired as a young girl, by a children’s book, Minty’s Magic Garden by Charles Rice, Virginia is amazed these days to be living in her own Louisiana magic garden, designed by her husband Charles. To add interesting textural and flowering layers to local gardens, she would like to see more gardeners plant native understory trees, such as the red buckeye, two-winged silverbell, winged elm, parsley-leaf hawthorn, black cherry, and hop hornbeam.


One of the rare plants in their “Tranquility” garden, the Christmas fern, was identified for the Yarbroughs by Dr. Terry Rehn. This plant was also a favorite of Emory Smith. Other native woodland perennials that call the garden home include an array of nodding ladies’-tresses, green dragons, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and trilliums.


Although floods, winds, and drought have provided unpredictable challenges—resulting in the loss of mature tulip poplars, oaks, giant spruce pines, and many understory trees—the native forest still thrives and is in constant renewal with native tree volunteers. This year, spruce pine tree saplings are present in large populations. A collection of small animals, and many bird and insect species regularly visit the garden. Neighbors drop in to make use of the “Prayer Garden” room. Last year, Charles built a free little library that is located near the common ground sidewalk of the subdivision. Daughter Julia Freeman, a designer with Rebel Graphix in Baton Rouge, created unique and educational plant identification labels for display when visitors come for tours.


The garden has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation. It was featured twice in the LSU Hilltop Arboretum’s garden tours and once in Louisiana Gardener magazine. LA Master Gardeners toured the garden in 2024, and local artists from Baton Rouge Plein Air have twice visited to paint this unique landscape.


Charles and Virginia, Congratulations for achieving a Louisiana Native Plant Society, Gold Level Certified Habitat!