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Homes

Trees still big deal to Miss Bettie

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published March 4, 2005

Bettie Nelson grew up climbing trees. She reaches for a picture on the bookshelf, an old framed black and white photo of a farmhouse so crowded by lush shade trees the entrance is almost indiscernible:

The place?

Her grandmother's house in Ellenton.

The memory?

The tangle of hands and feet gripping branches, a peek of sky and leaves, a cradle of strong limbs under her body.

"Oh, there were oak trees, grapefruit trees, guava trees and something called a mangerine tree, the fruit was so good, we used to peel it with our hands," she recalled one afternoon from her antique-filled living room in New Suburb Beautiful.

"I was a country girl who loved to climb trees. It was what we did for fun. Now that I'm an old woman, I think it's funny. But at the time, being in those trees was a big deal to me."

Nelson, a retired South Tampa real estate agent, spent much of her childhood at her grandmother's house, which sat within short walking distance of the Gamble Plantation in Manatee County. The 3,500-acre plantation was purchased in 1873 by her great-grandfather, George Patten, for $1 an acre in a courthouse sale.

Patten subdivided and platted the land and turned it into the town of Ellenton. The town, south of Tampa and near Palmetto, doesn't much look anymore like the place of Nelson's childhood, but she never forgot those trees.

In fact, trees became Nelson's lifelong passion of sorts. Her love for them in a state long besieged by development, pushed her into years of civic volunteerism. In the 1970s, she led a citywide beautification effort among business owners and garden club volunteers that resulted in the planting of dozens of Chinese elms in downtown Tampa.

"Downtown was a real concrete jungle in those days," she recalls. "We wanted a tree that would grow in a harsh environment." Business owners who gave $100 saw their names inscribed on plaques and a flourish of green in what was then a harsh-looking urbanscape.

Nelson also reaped what she sowed.

"It was a great project. Everyone really got involved, and the trees got planted."

Years later, she marshaled more volunteers to plant hundreds of ferns beneath the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway overpass at Howard Avenue. In 2004, she was feted by the Tampa Federation of Garden Club Circles for her work erecting an elegant, four-tiered fountain beneath the same gritty overpass.

Last year, Nelson again joined forces with the federation, as well as 14 local garden clubs, the National Garden Club and the city of Tampa to plant trees on public land. The trees were Southern magnolias, a species hardy to central Florida that blooms luscious white fragrant blossoms.

The city donated and planted more than a dozen magnolias at sites around Tampa including elementary schools, parks, playgrounds, libraries, medians and memorials.

"The city really got it done," she raves.

The effort, known as the America's-A-Bloom National Garden Club Project, and locally as the Tampa's-A-Bloom Project, brought together hundreds of small garden clubs in cities across the nation.

Nelson, who speaks in a mellifluous Southern accent and offers a visitor a glass of sweet tea, a slice of chocolate cake, and an hour of gracious, unhurried conversation, is modest to the point of being shy.

Though she was awarded the Mayor's Beautification Award at Mayor Pam Iorio's annual breakfast on Jan. 26, she insists she was just one square in a deftly stitched patchwork of volunteerism. She accepted, but promptly gave the award to the Tampa Federation of Garden Club Circles, whom she says really made the magnolia planting project bloom.

"I believe it's up to people who live in an area to help themselves, to make where they live prettier," she says.

"I've always been interested in doing this. And you know what? For me, civic involvement on a worthwhile project is really what it's all about - whether it's planting trees or just making a city a better place."

[Last modified March 3, 2005, 09:12:11]