Leaving the bustling busyness of a Fairhope street and turning into the shady, private drive of Joy Word's garden oasis, the visitor is immersed into a comfortably darkened, cool sanctuary for critters, plants and people.

Garden grottoes, thought by some as quaint relics of the past, are created with natural materials and represent ideas about nature. The grotto gardener composes her garden, consciously or unconsciously, with elements representing earth, water, plants, structures and sky. These elements are arranged by the gardener into a comforting, low-key symphony that expresses depth, darkness, silence and mystery.

The word "grotto" comes from the Greek word "kruptos," meaning hidden. Grottoes were originated as a sort of point of union between God in the sky and the grounded Earth Mother. Contact with Earth Mother was closest in caves with a fountain of spring water close by. Such places around the world became shrines. When Roman emperors wanted Greek shrines in their gardens, they fashioned grottoes with fountains. The earth element is traditionally a cave; a natural or manmade waterfall adds green to the cave and life where mosses and ferns flourish. Joy's unintentional lush garden grotto provides a cooling respite from the hot July sun and a fine accompaniment to her vine-covered cottage retreat.

This former garden shop owner and purveyor of garden plants and art is now retired from the business end, but is just as busy propagating new plants and creating her ever-evolving garden oasis. Her retirement of two years now affords her the opportunity to share the labors and joys of gardening with her eight grandchildren. Grandkids Ian, Arden and McKenzie were visiting their grandmother recently and were excited to finally find the correct pot that their cactus plant would love. Their grandmother has planted a few vegetables with them to explain the gardening process and provide edible rewards for all the hard work.

Joy learned a little about gardening from her parents during her own childhood in Mobile. After she married, her gardening interest grew as she wanted to spruce up and pretty her yard as a newlywed. Between raising her three children and taking care of her home, her desire to feel the satisfaction of seeing things grow slowly mushroomed into a hobby that became a business. She began her garden shop in Gulf Shores and relocated to Fairhope some 25 years ago. Along with providing plants, garden art and accessories, Joy offered her knowledge to clients as she placed plants in their homes and condos. She learned to propagate efficiently and enjoyed multiplying and selling colorful geraniums in clay pots.

After working hard in her business for many years, Joy now spends her days propagating plants for her own grotto-like garden and sharing garden joys with her family. She enjoys the process of watching the garden grow and evolve, rather than demanding instant perfection. Her small yard is nearly full of greenery and flowering tropicals and shrubs. Two stately, mature crape myrtles welcome at the entry area porch and shade much of the garden. Her tropicals collection includes lush and thriving banana shrubs, bird-of-paradise and a large-leaf tropical favorite called "white bird," a shrub whose white flowers nestle almost shyly down into the plant.

Ferns, mosses, and vines add their lush green coolness to the colorful tropicals. Joy loves ginger lilies and has added many fragrant, colorful specimens into her yard. She also grows daylilies, plumbago, wisteria, and, in a small, sunny patch of lawn, zinnias climb heartily toward the sky. A lovely, majestic fountain centers the garden and whispers with its trickles to "Come repose in this still place—enjoy the green coolness." The environment is serene, comforting, and sensory-pleasing.

Joy does all of the gardening chores from raking to weeding to watering and enjoys the exercise her hobby provides. She collects leaves from neighbors to use as mulch and enjoys placing garden art and signs from her shop throughout the boundaries of her yard.

Dealing with the grief of widowhood, Joy intimately learned that when personal sorrows weigh down the spirit, solace and balm are often found in nature. In her grotto garden, where she is so personally acquainted with nature, she works in this lovely place that invites active experimentation, investigative curiosity, and diligent labor. The grieving heart discovers the garden to be a place of solace—a place that waits for us-where, in the green stillness, God speaks to us. The old lessons of the cycle of life, the ebb and flow of the seasons, and of those things greater than ourselves whisper to us of comfort and peace and of a continuum that reminds us that nothing ever really passes completely from existence, but only changes form.

 Life, Joy has learned, is all the better for our gardens and our gardens speak things to the world for us in ways more eloquently than words ever could.