Being a transplant isn’t easy.

New places, new faces, new customs, new rules.

But being a member of the Garden Club of Savannah boosts the likelihood of success, whether the transfer is a plant … or a person.

Just ask Indiana transplant Ena Shelley.

In the summer of 2019, Shelley and her husband left their home in Indianapolis for Savannah, a dream they’d shared since 2005.

“I fell in love with it,” Shelley says of her first Savannah sighting with her son. “I was like a kid in a candy shop.”

The architecture, the history, the food, the flowers worked their magic and captured Shelley’s heart.

Shelley returned to Savannah with her husband the following year. He was equally smitten, prompting the couple to make thrice-yearly visits to the Hostess City until they retired and made it their full-time home.

Settling in a new place, though, is different from visiting it.

“I remember feeling, Oh, gosh, am I going to fit in?” Shelley said.

Thanks to her many Savannah visits, Shelley cemented a friendship with Savannah photographer Connie McCay, and discovered the key to thriving in her new hometown: the Garden Club of Savannah, of which McCay was a member.

The 97-year-old Savannah institution provided Shelley with a nearly ready-made recipe for putting down roots in her new home: a dash of culture, a dose of community, a commitment to charity, a growing network of friends and, of course, plenty of gardening tips.

Today, Shelley is flourishing (and so is her garden), thanks in no small part to the Club, where she became fast friends with longtime gardener Nele Ewaldsen.

The two met when Shelley, still new to the Club, was charged with chairing its sole fund-raiser, affectionately dubbed the NOGS (once North of Gaston Street, now North of Gwinnett Street) Tour, a springtime stroll through several private and historic Savannah gardens.

“I said, ‘You know I’m not from here? You know I’ve never done this?’” Shelley recounted telling Club members when given the assignment.

But Club members encouraged her to forge ahead.

“They said, ‘You have got to contact Nele for the Garden Tour, because she’s this outstanding pianist and teaches piano lessons; see if she and her students will play piano at the tea.’ I had seen Nele at meetings, but she didn’t know me from Adam. I was so nervous calling her, but I didn’t need to be. She was so gracious. I took a deep breath after that. It was fantastic.”

Through their shared love of gardening, flowers and learning, Shelley and Ewaldsen became fast friends.

Ewalden’s experience was the perfect complement for Shelley, who spent decades gardening in her native Indiana but was somewhat green when it came to working with Savannah’s sun-parched plats, sandy soil and planting seasons that stretched east and west of summer.

“I loved to garden in Indianapolis, but I knew it was going to be different here, things that would grow in this zone and that one would be different,” Shelley said.

Different too was the depth of planting. In the Midwest, Shelley dug deep to protect the plant’s roots during harsh winters. Not so much here, where shallow and sprawling are more appropriate. Watering was another shift. Accustomed to saturating the soil, Shelley struggled to find a balance appropriate for her sandy Dutch Island yard. And then, there was the wildlife, all matter of foragers intent on destroying her hard work.

Enter Ewaldsen, a native Savannahian and University of Georgia Master Gardener.

“I will tell you, working with a master gardener like Nele is like having Google right at your hands,” Shelley said. “She’ll say, ‘Now you know the soil on this … or you need to add this or the sunlight …’ I just feel so lucky to know this person.”

Shelley met Ewaldsen through the NOGS Tour, but the duo solidified their friendship during days of digging at Savannah’s Ronald McDonald House, one of three community gardens Club members tend (the others being the Massie Heritage Center and the Savannah Botanical Gardens).

After NOGS, Shelley and Ewaldsen paired up on weekly workdays to share the landscaping load.

“We don’t do the heavy maintenance,” Ewaldsen explained. “We plant flowers, pick up magnolia leaves, try to bring some joy to the residents through the flowers, something happy for them to see. In fact, that’s what’s so gratifying. We’ll be out there working and one of the residents will come up and say, ‘You just have no idea what those flowers mean.’ It’s a little spot of joy to them.”

The Garden Club’s more than 100 active and sustaining members spread that joy far and wide. Beyond maintaining the three gardens, the Club also awards grants to nonprofits that share its mission of beautification, education and conservation in Chatham County. Over nearly 20 years, the group has provided more than $450,000 in grants, supporting everything from pollinator gardens in elementary schools to landscaping for the homeless veterans’ Tiny House Project.

For both Ewaldsen and Shelley, the Club’s sense of charity and community is just as important as its commitment to flora.

“I find that giving back is really more important than taking,” Ewaldsen said. “And if I can help somebody and encourage them to be a gardener, just impart what I know. And I learn from people, too. Just seeing old friends and making new friends. We try to be very friendly.”

Shelley said, “One of the reasons I said yes to doing that NOGS Tour in 2023 is because the funds we raise go back into grant programs, everything from the tiny houses for the vets to Tharros Place getting girls out of human trafficking, I mean, all these worthy causes. I love to give back, too. I feel like that’s my duty. And it just felt good.”

They both describe gardening as a similarly spiritual undertaking.

“My garden is my sanctuary away from my church,” Ewaldsen said. “It’s just so soothing and calming. The Lord and I do a lot of talking in my garden. I could be out there all day, every day.”

Shelley said, “I just feel so peaceful when I am gardening. It is almost like a spiritual experience. It’s always where I did my best problem solving for work. And I think it was because I was still. It makes you be still and listen. It’s very calming.”

Through Ewaldsen and the Garden Club, Shelley found a resource as well as a refuge.

“I have never felt as welcomed into a group as I have felt in this Garden Club,” Shelley said. “I mean, I move here from the North; I know two people and now I know so many people who have just been so welcoming.”

Ewaldsen said, “It’s hard not to like Ena.”

The same can be said of the Garden Club, an organization dedicated to good friends and good deeds. All of that will be on display for the world to see next month during the upcoming sold-out NOGS Tour, which includes a Southern-style tea at the Green-Meldrim House, a National Historic Landmark.

Shelley remembers asking attendees their thoughts on the tour last year.

“They said, ‘We are just sitting here pinching ourselves. We cannot believe we’re in this beautiful historic home, looking at this beauty, eating this food. We don’t even know how to describe this,’” Shelley explained.

But Shelley and Ewaldsen do.

“It’s called Southern hospitality,” Shelley said.

“Better than that, it’s called Savannah hospitality,” countered Ewaldsen.

This article appears in Connect Savannah I March 2024.