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Linda Trammell, above at left, stands in the foyer of Cedar Hill at a 1978 home tour. Visitors pause in the kitchen at Cedar Hill, center, and at right is homeowner Sara Jane Skinner.
a shift at the Sport home when their girls were little and Lynn and I traveling to Luthersville when the home of my Uncle Bob and Aunt Menlia Trammell was on the tour there. Coweta County is filled with beauty spots that include lots of history and plenty of natural beauty, too. In addition to the organized tours of homes and gardens in spring and winter, there are driving tours that take visitors and local residents through neighborhoods where there are houses with columns and gingerbread – as well as gardens with typical Southern plantings and more exotic trees, shrubs and flowers. Coweta has two gardens that welcome visitors regularly. Both are in northern Coweta. Oak Grove surrounds an antebellum home south of Palmetto. Just south of Roscoe, Dunaway Gardens, a rock garden dating at least to the 1920s, has been beautifully restored. I am told 40,000 visitors per year visit Dunaway. I am well aware that lawns, gardens and plantings are part of the home tour process. I know Lynn and I give extra thought to our front yard on the years when the tour is in our neighborhood. I have seen people on tour weekend driving down Temple Avenue slowly – just enjoying the ambience created by the homes and
the crape myrtle, dogwood, gardenias and camellias. My good friend Pam Mayer, who is the visitor center coordinator for the Coweta County Convention and Visitors Bureau, tells me gardens ride along with homes when it comes to attracting visitors. “It ties in with the homes. Springtime is just beautiful here with the dogwoods and the daffodils,” she said – adding that beautiful lawns and garden spots set off Coweta County’s historic homes to perfection. Newnan has an abundance of historic neighborhoods with homes from the 1820s forward. There are plenty of historic homes – examples of a wide range of architectural styles – along rural roads and in every Coweta town. Housing stock that once might not have been seen as historic may be today. Well built homes in former mill villages across the county have survived – by decades – the companies that built them. The more compact housing built after World War II for the families of returning servicemen now meet age criteria for National Register of Historic Places listing. Visitors “still want to see our homes,” Pam says. She explains “that’s what people want to see whether they’re from Pennsylvania” or just a county or two away.
Folks have a hunger for “that Southern charm,” Pam relates, and local homes fit the bill. Whether it’s intricate gingerbread, antebellum columns or huge logs that form a pioneer cabin, Coweta has them all. Surrounding them are boxwoods, dogwood and every color of flower as the seasons change. NCM
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