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Mott Price is known by many titles: coach, principal, assistant principal, assistant superintendent and teacher, all in the Eden City Schools.  But when he retired from school classrooms, offices and playing fields in 1993, he took up a long dormant hobby, gardening.

“I’m a farmer at heart,” he says. Mott and Joyce Price’s house on Tellowee Road in Eden hardly looks like a farm, however.

The couple has lived there in a house that sits at the bottom of a slope since 1990. The slope could be a glimpse of paradise in bloom.

The Prices tend 75 rose bushes of many hues and styles; adding one or more each year now.

Mott says roses take so much time that it is useless to just have just a few. Making the rose beds, spraying, deadheading, fertilizing and mulching is just plain hard work.

Mott reads up on plants and gardening, but is basically a self-made gardener. He sees a place in the vast yard and designs a plot for plants, flowers and evergreens to have a home.

 There is no doubt that Joyce loves roses, because some of their earlier bushes were gifts to Joyce for special occasions.

She and Mott enjoy sharing the blooms with friends, neighbors and family.

Joyce also loves lilies. Mott has planted a row of Stargazer lilies in vibrant shades of pink and white by the front walk at the house. Nearby are other lilies including the stately trumpet-bloomed Casablancas.

Tiny lilies-of–the-valley spread out into a large patch under bushes near the driveway. The lilies are ordered from catalogs, according to Mott.

In the living room are orchids, also one of Joyce’s favorites. The many species line the base of a large window in order to get the light they need to bloom properly. “Lighting is everything,” says Joyce.

One of the reasons Mott caught on to gardening is that he doesn’t like to be inside the house.

Each morning he and Joyce visit the YMCA for a workout then, after about 10:30 a.m., Mott gets out to his real workout. Joyce says she is on weed patrol, but seems to give all the garden glory to Mott.

Together they have tweaked and trimmed towering hydrangeas, gardenias, azaleas, moon flowers, callas, impatiens, and many, many other varieties that bring a sweet smell and dazzling colors to their yard.

Interspersed between the paths and beds are birdhouses, ceramic animals and some most unusual “blooms” — lime-green tennis balls on top of stakes. Joyce says Mott planted these for granddaughter Claire and told her they were “tennis flowers”. 

The Prices have visited gardens on their trips to Europe. Two years ago they were in Normandy, France, on June 6 to commemorate the landing at Normandy during World War II. Mott was in the second landing at Normandy while serving in General George Patton’s Third Army. He participated in the Battle of the Rhineland and the Battle of Central Europe.

At the ceremony on that June 6, Mott and Joyce sat on the stage with Defense Secretary Robert Gates for the event. Also, they attended the opening of the World War II Memorial in Washington.

Mott Price was born to be a farmer, he says, as his skills in gardening show. But he may have gotten inspiration, fortitude and love of his work in the garden from serving his country, serving the students and families of so many in the Eden community, and leading young men on the football field to excellence than this modest farmer is willing to admit.

Rachel Wright is a native of Eden and a part-time instructor in basic skills at Rockingham Community College.