655 Frances Lane
The Ashland Garden Club has selected the courtyard and front gardens of the Campbell Center on the Southern Oregon University campus as the Garden of the Month for September 2026. The Campbell Center, located at 655 Frances Lane, is the home of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University (OLLI at SOU), with an office and classrooms surrounding the courtyard. The garden was designed and is maintained by volunteer members of OLLI.
Starting in 2008, OLLI member Lillian Maksymowitz led efforts to restore and replant the courtyard which had been maintained before that by the very small SOU landscape crew. Maksymowitz directed heroic labor by numerous OLLI volunteers to remove debris, prune, weed and plant (on a severely limited budget) the greatly neglected area. Rampant bamboo was successfully removed.
The current garden configuration was primarily created by Fran Adams and students of her OLLI class on landscape design in 2013. This was the first time the garden was planted according to a comprehensive overall plan. The layout of the OLLI campus, with two ranch-style stucco buildings facing each other across a walled courtyard, suggested the symmetrical layout and Southwest planting theme.
Adams is an OLLI member and retired professional landscape designer. Among the goals at that time were to improve pedestrian circulation and provide more places for students to gather and chat comfortably outdoors. This was accomplished by widening some walkways and removing others. The new plant selections at that time acknowledged the discovery of compacted soil not far from the surface. There have been subsequent minor changes to the garden.
The dominant trees in the beds that front Frances Lane are dogwoods and the trees in the courtyard are redbuds — both varieties that provide gorgeous, changing colors all year. The deciduous barberry shrubs that border the two main courtyard beds are also sources of attractive color variations throughout the year.
The courtyard Shasta daisies are great sources of cheer in the spring and are much admired among the OLLI membership and staff. Some other courtyard plantings are yarrow (including an unusual red), yucca, nepeta, euphorbia and several kinds of asters. Narrow beds against the inner courtyard walls harbor nandina.
The groundcover in the two main courtyard beds is cotoneaster. During the pandemic, when volunteer gardeners were hard to come by, California clover weeds took hold among the cotoneaster and it is only through dedicated, hard work by volunteers over the past three years that the clover has mostly been eradicated.
Interesting plants among the Frances Lane beds, in addition to ornamental grasses and lavender, include caryopteris, pieris, lamb’s ear, germander, salvia and larger barberry.
The garden is maintained almost exclusively by OLLI volunteers, with advice and irrigation system assistance from SOU Landscape Supervisor Zack Williams and his minimal crew. The current OLLI garden volunteers are Scout Ames, Kathy Apple, Viki Ashford, John Barth, Helene Becker, Teresina Christy, Bill McDonald, Carol Mockridge, Kim Passini, Barb Settles, Ruthie Sloan, Becky Snow, Nancy Steel, Penny Thorpe, Kathy Uhtoff, Dan Wells and Shannon Wolff. Two of these volunteers are avid gardeners who are not current OLLI members.
OLLI member Sherri Morgan is the current Garden Team leader. Morgan is a retired professional landscape designer, as well as past president of the Ashland Garden Club and the Jackson County Master Gardeners Association.
OLLI at SOU is a member‐driven educational community primarily serving adults aged 50 and above, offering diverse courses and programs, each designed to foster lifelong learning, encourage social interaction and provide cultural enrichment. Join to participate or just stroll by to enjoy the garden.
The Ashland Garden Club has been selecting Gardens of the Month from spring through fall for more than twenty-five years. Nominations are gratefully received at gardenofthemonth@ashlandorgardenclub.org. Readers are invited to check out the club’s website at ashlandorgardenclub.org for information on meeting times and places.
Article by Ruth Sloan, AGC & OLLI Member