Sasee Gets Personal with Sharon Turner: Creative Landscapes

As a Georgetown native and Clemson University graduate with a Horticulture and Landscape Design degree, Sharon became the owner of Creative Landscapes in 1979. Although her business offers outdoor space designs and installations, she loves to garden at home during her personal time. She has a vegetable garden as well as a collection of orchids, succulents, and begonias. She loves to create floral arrangements from her garden and also loves to grow new plants from seeds, cuttings, and divisions.

Horticulture is a passion Sharon shares with some of her best buds. “We share plants and talk plants a great deal of the time. Often after I have helped someone with their garden, we become closer and more likely to share with each other, plants as well as stories, advice, experiences, triumphs, and sorrows.” She believes that the most important qualities of a best friend are to be trustworthy, a great listener, and empathetic to what you learn about one another. Sharon and her best friend have been known to divide overgrown plants located in public spaces by helping themselves to a little division, snip, or seed. They never injure the parent plant and it’s usually a very covert operation. She shares this idea with many of her plant-loving customers and one commented that “the plant that grows the best is the one stolen.”

Sharon’s children are also interested in gardening. Her son has one of those “pull the car over so I can see that” flower beds in his front yard and her daughter, who is in a new home, is planning for a large vegetable garden and is going to can her own produce. Additionally, Sharon has had many employees (that like to call her momma) that she loves like her own. She exclaimed, “I am so thankful to have been able to watch all of my children blossom into their new directions of life!” Green thumbs certainly do run in her family. Her father’s father grafted fruit trees and her mother was raised on a farm where she grew a huge vegetable garden. She always had cut flowers from her yard displayed in the house as Sharon does, “from garden to table” so to speak.

When I asked her if she talks to her plants, she laughed and replied: “Well, sometimes I do threaten some of them with going into the compost bin.” As far as some advice, she suggests saving your coffee grounds to apply as mulch to your favorite acid-loving plants: Gardenia, Camellia, Azalea, Hydrangea, and Holly. She explained how important it is to know the watering requirements as they vary greatly depending on the plant. She also believes that plants are like people too, “in the sense that plants are very responsive to attention: some need a great deal and others prefer to be left alone. Like people, plants can sometimes frustrate and disappoint, but they can also bring you great joy and help boost your confidence.” Although Sharon was not a gardener as a child, she has certainly bloomed into one.