FOR RELEASE
March 4, 1999

          Celebrating the arrival of spring, the first Emily Fishburne Whaley Memorial Lecture will take place Thursday, March 25, at 6:30 p.m. in Bond Hall Auditorium on The Citadel campus. Shelia Wertimer, one of Charleston’s foremost landscape architects, will present a slide lecture, "British Influences on American Landscape Design." The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

          Emily Fishburne Whaley, noted Charleston gardener, became famous at the age of 85 when Mrs. Whaley and her Charleston Garden was published by Algonquin Books in 1997. She believed that gardens restore the soul.

          "Gardening," she said, ". . . truly is an ongoing enterprise, one that will pay the best kind of dividends. It’s a wonderful resource, one that develops your eye for beauty of all kinds—color, shape, design, and light. It provides an avenue to creativity. It entertains and it tempers stress. Plus it’s always there for you."        

          After graduating from Cornell University, Wertimer studied for a year in England. She recently finished a Japanese water garden for the Calhoun Mansion and is currently on the design team for Francis Marion Square.