NATCHEZ — For one Natchez woman, the garden provides the perfect peaceful place to relax in the morning and afternoon.

When The Dart landed on Peachtree Drive Wednesday, it found Kay McKey with a client at her spa and salon, which she is working on moving into her residence.

“It gives me more time to garden,” McKey said. “When my son calls me he doesn’t ask what I’m doing, he says, ‘I know, you are working in the yard.’

“I just love taking care of plants. I call them my babies.”

Between her front yard and backyard, McKey estimates she has more than 30 different types of plants. It’s a stark contrast to what the home looked like nine years ago when she bought it.

“The yard was grown up completely,” McKey said. “It has taken me nine years, but I’ve almost got it to where I want it to be.”

McKey has built a deck that leads down to a pavilion complete with a fountain in the backyard. She said it’s the perfect, peaceful place to enjoy a morning cup of coffee or a glass of wine in the evening.

In the front yard, she’s built a privacy fence with ivy growing up it that leads to her side door.

“I had three boxwood wreathes stolen from the privacy fence in the alley leading to my door a few weeks ago,” she said. “Someone got all up in my space.”

Beneath both windows are flowerbeds. More flowerbeds and bushes are also along the driveway and near the road.

She has at least two projects left, McKey said. In the front yard, she’d like to extend her porch over the window to the left because the area gets too much sun, which limits the plants that can grow in the area.

In the backyard, she wants to put up a privacy fence at the rear of the property, cut down some trees and see what she can grow in the area.

“My family says I take after my grandmother, we call her Big Momma,” McKey said of her grandmother, Myrtle Lee Hollowell. “My Big Momma loved to be in the garden and growing flowers.”

Her favorite type of flowers are Gerbera Daisies, and she has a pair of flowerbeds in the front yard dedicated to them, one around a trunk of a felled tree. But she admits she likes all flowers.

“I love everything about flowers,” she said. “They make your yard so pretty.”

McKey said she does spend a lot of time in the garden. Weather depending, her Sundays and Mondays are dedicated to the garden, and every other day she puts in an hour or so.

But then again, McKey said she would rather be in the garden than anywhere else.

“I am just an outdoor person,” she said. “Besides, I love doing yard work way more than housework. It is my therapy.”