Garden Tended by 90-Year-Old Twins Highlight of Tour
By Lyndsey Mikeal

This weekend, the Chapel Hill Garden Club will sponsor its annual spring garden tour. One of the gardens on the tour is located at 732 Gimghoul Road. It is called the “Sister’s Garden,” and flowers and bushes line the front stone wall and wrap all the way around the house.

Twin sisters Bernice Stiles and Barbara Ward started the garden in 1944, when they first moved to North Carolina. The sisters started with azalea bushes they purchased from the Azalea Festival in Wilmington.

But azaleas aren't the only thing you’ll see in the garden.

“I think blue adds a lot to the garden,” Ward said. “You’ll see lots of blue here, and today the Blue Flox, Russian forget-me-nots and the iris are really fantastic,.”

The garden is also home to peonies, Columbine, Gerber daisies, Dogwood trees and tulips in any color you can imagine.

Ward and Stiles spent more than 60 years making their garden a Chapel Hill landmark, and they admit they couldn’t have done it alone.

"We've had wonderful student help -- we have now some 18-year-olds, (and) we call them our backs,” Stiles said, laughing. “Our daughters help, our nieces and nephews...we're really lucky."

Anyone who visits the Sister's Garden is welcome to help out by pulling weeds or "dead-heading" pansies so they'll come back fuller next year.

The sisters, who celebrate their 91st birthday tomorrow, urge people to come and enjoy not only their garden, but all the others on the tour.

For more information and colorful pictures of the garden tour, visit www.chapelhillgardentour.org.