Kathleen Pourciau arrives at the door in a linen sundress with bare feet. Like the marjoram and mint in the homemade cookies she pulls from the oven, she is delightfully vibrant and fresh from the soil. Her verdant kitchen garden is a lush sanctuary plucked straight from a daydream. Instead of scientific precision, Kathleen opts for an artist’s paintbrush, composing her masterpiece by placing a seedling, start or table, and seeing what happens. Though she never declares the job finished, Kathleen’s daily toil has crystallized a long-held hope into something deeply rooted.

The daydreaming started amid some of the Pourciau family’s most difficult days. In 2012, at 18 years old, her oldest daughter, Bonnie Kate Zoghbi, was shot in the knee during a mass shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. What followed was a lengthy recuperation process and nearly a dozen surgeries. Throughout it all, Bonnie Kate recovered in the only downstairs bedroom of the family’s Old Goodwood home—a parlor with a sun-drenched view of the side lot.

“I wanted my garden to hit all your senses. You’re going to see it and smell it while you hear the wind chimes, birds or the trickling water. Then, you’ll taste … and then, you feel it.” —Kathleen Pourciau

“We would look out of the window, and she would ask, ‘Am I going to run again? Am I going to dance? And ‘what’s my life going to be like?’ We would dream and hope and talk about it,” Kathleen recalls. “Then, she got married, and eight years went by.”

In March of 2020, Kathleen was bedridden with COVID. “For a moment, the roles reversed, and she took care of me in that little daybed in front of the big window in the sunroom,” Kathleen says. “That’s when she said, ‘Mama, you have to start a garden.’” Kathleen originally said no, held back by the idea that a kitchen garden had to be strictly utilitarian. But after seeing the lush, bountiful and beautiful possibilities Bonnie Kate showed her on Pinterest, her perspective shifted.

That spring, as the world shuttered amid pandemic protocols, the Pourciau family began to build what has become their favorite place to gather.

With seven children and seven grandchildren, and more on the way, it needed to be both sprawling and welcoming.

“We both designed it. She couldn’t carry the stuff and unload the truck,” Kathleen says, noting that Bonnie Kate continues to manage chronic pain and mobility challenges. “I was the grunt, and she was the brains,” she says with a laugh.

Since then, the garden has evolved through many iterations. Some elements have come and gone, like the satsuma tree she planted as an homage to her grandfather’s one-acre garden and grove, only to lose it to an unseasonable cold snap. But as the garden matured, it began nourishing the ties that connect generations.

When Kathleen’s late great-uncle, Wilmer Mills, heard that she had built a garden, he and his wife, Betsy, came to visit. He saw something sacred in Kathleen’s work. Hugging her with misty eyes, he declared, “When I go to sleep tonight, I am going to lie in bed with a grin from ear to ear on my face … ‘cause you planted a garden.”

“He knew the things that I was about to learn,” Kathleen says, smiling. “That it’s so good to have your hand in dark, rich soil, and it’s so good to hope for the next thing. There were so many things I had no idea I was about to bumble into, but as a gardener, he knew what I was in for.”

For Kathleen, the garden is where beauty, truth and nourishment live in harmony. “I spend a lot of time out here by myself,” she says. “The garden helps me connect with God, with myself, and it has brought our family together in a different way. It’s a place where people gather, and it’s so life-giving, so nourishing, even if you’re not eating from it.”

The greatest yield isn’t found in the harvesting of a picture-perfect salad bouquet, though they are a delightful addition to dinner parties. Instead, Kathleen sees it in the new view she catches from the sunroom. Looking out through the same glass where they once sat, praying for healing and sharing their hopes for the future, Kathleen now watches Bonnie Kate and her son, Wilder, make their way into the dappled shade of the live oak and find a spot among the flowers. There, they dream of all the life to come. And the memories taking root in the soil have become perennial, too.

“The garden whispers things like hope, abundance, patience, anticipation and the value of each season that might seem hard,” Kathleen says. “Spring isn’t as glorious without winter because so many things have to happen underground before you get to enjoy this. So each season prepares you for the next.”