Iris garden owner hopes to preserve property
By Gregg MacDonald
Margaret Thomas, owner of Margaret's Gardens on Lawyers Road, really wants to preserve her renowned iris gardens, “but sometimes you need money too,” she said last week.
Thomas, 86, moved to the Oak Hill location with her husband George in 1963 and bought 33 acres. “This was really the country then,” she said. “[Lawyers] Road wasn't even paved yet.”
In 1973, the couple decided to sell all but 5.4 acres and use those exclusively for gardening.
After George died the following year, Thomas decided to dedicate herself to cultivating irises, for which she developed a fondness earlier in life.
She currently has more than 2,000 varieties or “cultivars” of irises, as well as hundreds of peonies and day lilies.
“It was 1976 when I really got serious and began charging sales tax,” she said last week.
Thomas recently took out a reverse mortgage on the property to pay another form of taxes – property taxes that are in excess of $7,000 per year.
“I really want to preserve this property as a park but I can't afford to give it away,” she said. “I have other good causes to also contribute to, like church and family.”
An effort by The Friends of Margaret's Gardens, a group formed in 2002, to preserve the area as a park failed when the county declined to add it to a Park Authority bond.
Edith Willis, head of the group and currently the garden's manager, began as a volunteer at the gardens in 1998.
Willis previously worked for 30 years in the nonprofit sector before retiring and is in the process of forming a nonprofit entity that could potentially purchase the property for preservation.
“We have drafted the articles of incorporation and are working on the bylaws,” she said.
According to Willis, once the nonprofit is active, it will be eligible for land acquisition grants, but that may not be enough to purchase the property.
“The gardens are self-supporting but not profitable. Our organization has all kinds of talent to draw from but we really need additional benefactors to be able to save the property,” she said.