The Resurrection

Easter is little more than three weeks away but one Grant Park business is celebrating a resurrection of its own right now.

Anyone who has been to the Garden*Hood nursery on Boulevard can't miss the Japanese Maple that's been painted blue.

The tree was a beloved staple of the property, which was the former home of the Urban Gardener.

But the drought that plagued Georgia for several years, led the Urban Gardner's eventual closure.

When Garden*Hood took over the property in 2009, its owners moved to the tree to a different location as part of a planned construction project for the space.

"We gave it our best shot, put it in its new home, took good care of it through that fall and winter but the winter of 2009 was kind of a brutal one," Kacey Cloues, Garden*Hood's store manager, told EastAtlantaPatch.com.

Though concerned about the tree's health, they were relieved to see it sprout leaves in the spring of 2010.

"But then, almost immediately, the center part started dying out and it started loosing its leaves in the center of the tree," Cloues said.

With no sign of life and not wanting to dig it up again, they painted it blue with the intention of making it a focal point and turning it into a bottle tree.

Only, the tree started budding again and sprouted leaves last fall through the paint.

Ironically, one landscaping customer theorized the tree may have been succumbing to bugs, but that the painting may have saved it.