The Sidewalks of Savannah
It’s one of those ecological ironies that Savannah in Georgia, has no savanna at all
Your archetypal savanna is a rolling grassland scattered with shrubs and isolated trees, whereas Savannah, GA, is high on a bluff overlooking the Savannah River surrounded by a lot of marshland.
I’ve been in America for two weeks photographing two cities for the Then and Now series – in Savannah and in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is actually behind us in season with the last of the daffodils hanging on and the tulips midway through. Savannah is very much ahead and I’d arrived in late April, “too late,” mourned my author host, “for the azaleas.”
Photographing a Then and Now book involves a lot of foot-slogging round a city, clutching a map and a sheaf of print-outs of archive photos. Sometimes you need to go back to a site two or three times if the light is wrong, so the day is spent criss-crossing back and forth, down sidewalks and through – in Savannah’s case – some beautiful squares. Along the way you see all kinds of interesting flora.
Savannah’s main claim to fame – apart from being the place General William T.Sherman headed for after burning Atlanta – is the book by John Berendt, ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’. It’s a true story about how a pillar of Savannah society, antique dealer and house restorer Jim Williams shot his gay lover.
Williams lived in Mercer House on Monterrey Square (main picture), one of the 20 or so linked squares planned out by Englishman James Oglethhorpe when he arrived and established the settlement in the 1730s. The squares make Savannah unique and it was the work of seven pioneering and indomitable southern ladies in the 1950s and people like Jim Williams who have kept it that way.
Back to the flora – in Savannah it’s not just the buildings that are charming. Even the weeds are! I came across what looked like Tradescantia self-seeding in the earth on the sidewalk (left), and how about this purple specimen for a bit of ground cover (right). It’s typical mode of operation was to invade the base of trees where the ground had been left open, or at the foot of road signs.
The azaleas may have gone but in late April the evergreen jasmine Trachelospermum jasminoides was everywhere and filling the air with its incredibly beautiful scent. In Savannah they don’t just train it along walls and fences, they like to clothe their roadsigns in it. Does this remind you of anything…?
Yes, this bit of jasmine topiary looks just like an old-fashioned ‘staddle stone’ used to support the base of granaries and in hay ricks.
If you ever get the chance to go to Savannah, grasp it with both hands, because it is a wonderful place. It has a genteel, slow pace of life and you can amble all day through the elegant squares, including the one where Forest Gump sat and said ‘Life is like a box of chocolates…’
After Savannah, Brooklyn is quite a shock to the system...
