This pear tree, in the West Bloomfield High School Literary Garden, is in honor of one of the central symbols of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. “It’s impossible to teach Walden and talk about Thoreau observing nature in a cinderblock classroom without windows,” says high school English teacher Jennifer Tianen of how she became inspired to start the garden. “Originally, we started with a neglected, weedy space” recalls Jennifer. “We began to ask museums, authors, and estates if there was anything that still grew at the homesteads or family homes of renown American authors that we could have.” And over the years, the wbhslitgarden has amassed an incredible collection of plants: lilacs of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Witman, a periwinkle from Alice Walker, harrison yellow roses from Emily Dickenson’s Amherst home, a viburnum picked out specially for the school by Josh Millerman, evening primroses planted at the request of Rita Dove, and sunflowers grown from seed ...