Gardens for a Sustainable Environment: Contemporary Concepts

This is part two of a two-part series on garden design. Be sure to check out Susan’s part one from our March/April issue, “Garden Design: Making It Your Own”.

Environmental sustainability matters to millennials. It ranks among their top three most important issues, along with college affordability and health care, according to a recent survey by Virginia21, a millennial advocacy organization. Millennials’ passion for environmental quality is fueling the flames of political advocacy and informing thoughtful personal choices.

This news sparks flashbacks of my own fervor for environmental advocacy at their age when I was employed as Virginia’s first Environmental Impact Statement Coordinator in the early 1970s. Passing the torch to millennials makes my heart sing and gives us all hope for the future of this earth.

Contemporary approaches to gardening reflect the values of environmental champions of all generations. And enhanced awareness and commitment to sustainability translates into garden design and plant material selection that favor sustainability over adherence to historical design norms.

At Home with Nature
What gives us greater joy in spring than a flowering dogwood announcing the end of winter? What better shades us from intense summer sun than a majestic white oak tree? These and a multitude of other native plants are a large part of what we love about living in Central Virginia. And they are the environmentally sustainable choice for our gardens.

I’ve touted native plant guru Dr. Douglas Tallamy and his book, Bringing Nature Home, in several previous issues of Lynchburg Living. Another valuable resource is a new book by Repp Glaettli, Piedmont Native Plants: A Guide for Landscapes and Gardens, reminding us of the aesthetic beauty of local native plants, supporting nurseries in stocking the best varieties, and cultivating deeper understanding of the cultural and natural heritage of native plants in nearby counties of our shared Piedmont region. It also offers practical tips for best growing practices and catalogues native trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, and perennial wildflowers.

First and foremost, contemporary sustainable garden design relies on the right plants for the right locations, accounting for site conditions: size, climate, soil, water, nutrition, and other plant needs. Native plants in the right place require little soil amendment, watering (once established), nutritional supplements, and human pampering. After all, since they’re in their native habitat, they demand no extra fuss.

I fell in love with one native plant at a time and added it to my yard. Then when rose rosette disease claimed dozens of my antique roses and I knew that I could not replant with roses, I chose natives to replace them and never looked back. I was committed to bringing nature home.

Pollinator Power
When I climbed the pasture fence at our farm to retrieve what I’d assumed was a piece of trash that looked suspiciously like a plastic Cheetos bag, I was immediately infatuated with an amazing orange blooming plant covered with monarchs and great spangled frittilaries. Googling it, I discovered it was aptly named butterfly weed, and I couldn’t resist digging it up for my yard. And… voila! I launched my commitment to creating a pollinator garden.

Most of my “starter” native/pollinator plants for my yard and garden came from our farm pastures, woods, and (I confess) even roadside ditches before natives started catching on with local nurseries in response to popular demand. For city folks, stock from country cousins, friends, or nurseries is a better choice than digging from property you don’t own. However, harvesting and transplanting roadside milkweed into a pollinator garden for monarch caterpillar sustenance seems a more noble act than leaving it for inevitable VDOT spraying or mowing.

Natives that attract pollinators, such as Joe Pye weed, coneflower, mountain mint, monarda, and summer phlox, can vigorously populate or happily co-exist with exotic cultivars in lush English-style borders and can vibrantly complete the formal design of a classical Italian garden or a French-style parterre, if that’s your preference and you’re not about to start over with your garden design. They also work well in modern, minimalist gardens; and hybrid designs are just fine.

They’re actually more interesting and contemporary.

Fun garden ideas that have been enjoyed for decades and are gaining increasing popularity are wildflower meadows sporting a mixture of pollinator-attracting flowers and native grasses, as well as woodlands gardens. They typically require a fairly expansive open or wooded area, although “mini-meadows” or tiny wooded areas in city backyards for wildflowers such as native large-flowered trillium can work well too.

The point of pollinator gardens is, of course, to attract and support a wide variety of birds, bees, butterflies, and insects, many of which require specific native plants for nourishment at various stages of their life cycle, with the classic example of milkweed for monarch caterpillars. It’s important for all of us, millennials and older folks, to understand that these host plants and the pollinators they support are critical to the biodiversity necessary for a healthy ecosystem.

Managing Water
A concept that’s turned into a viable alternative garden design and has gained traction in recent years is rain gardens. Rain gardens are basically an effectively engineered way to deal with areas where rain collects or that flood periodically from run-off from impervious surfaces such as buildings, roads and walkways. They are depressions in the landscape that gather water but eventually drain. What they’re NOT is swamp land, ponds, water gardens, or other land that remains wet or under water as a usual thing.

Plants that work in rain gardens can survive periodically standing in water, followed by dry spells. We have a prime example of a well-designed rain garden here in Lynchburg’s downtown Riverfront park. The area is subject to runoff from our city that rises on the bluffs above it. You’ll notice the garden is designed with trenching, sunken beds, and bridges leading to the adjacent performance area.

The garden’s been scientifically engineered with layers of rocks and other devices so water can drain slowly, removing pollutants, and be absorbed back into the earth rather than running directly into the James River. Rain gardens are an environmentally sound method of dealing with city storm water run-off, water conservation, and river water quality. Planted with site-appropriate plants, they are a beautiful, as well as functional, solution to environmental degradation from soil erosion and river pollution.

If the idea of hiring professionals to design a backyard rain garden seems too grand or expensive, but you have issues with rainwater runoff from your roof, driveway, or other impermeable surfaces, you can simplify matters with a Do-It-Yourself version, as I did. My roof drainage problem resulted in a mud hole at my basement door after every heavy or prolonged rain. With steep slopes rising from this door on both sides to downspouts at the corners of the first floor of the house, water inevitably cascaded downhill, taking soil with it, to… guess where! What to do?

First, I hauled in rocks and pavers and hand-built dry stack stone walls and a stepping stone path over permeable garden fabric to the door. (When my husband Tim calls me his “Rockette,” it’s definitely not because I’m a long-legged NYC dancer!) I then angled out terraced slopes behind the walls and added large rocks for soil retention. Next, I affixed one end of 15-20 ft. PVC pipes to each downspout to run the water out from the house, and planted small trees, shrubs, and perennials that could handle periodic flooding. I camouflaged the pipes with rocks and polished the terraces off with mulch. And, miraculously, it worked! I didn’t even know my home-grown concoction was a variation on a garden design with the official name of “rain garden.”

Water gardens, on the other hand, are just that: pools, streams, waterfalls, fountains, and other water features. As we’ve seen from looking at the history of gardens through time, water features with wonderful water plants have been integral to gardens for centuries, and they can be incorporated into indoor or outdoor spaces. They have never faded in popularity, and likely never will.

While sunken gardens offer the option of flooding and deep watering through slow absorption (and are typically more necessary and likely in arid climates), our area is more likely to embrace raised gardens that promote speedy drainage. They also serve the function of providing elderly or mobility-challenged gardeners the ability to enjoy gardening at a comfortable height, thereby meeting physical, medical, psychological, and spiritual needs.

Designs Turn Sideways, Up, and Down
When space is limited, or even if not, sometimes a small, simplified pocket, porch, patio, courtyard, or even alleyway garden is preferred. These tiny gardens can be exquisite, lovely, inviting, and a pleasure to their creators and guests.

Vertical gardens are enjoying a resurgence with a return to inner-city living, smaller home lots, condos, and other close living quarters where garden space is likely to be curtailed or non-existent, as well as in hotels, commercial offices and restaurants. Whenever I see a successful one, I find myself searching for the source of water and soil or other medium for nutrient delivery necessary for plant life. And I typically find a well-engineered structure that serves as a framework to hold individual plants and an irrigation system. I’m intrigued, but this isn’t something I plan to do at home. My engineering skills were pretty much tapped out with my “rain garden” project.

Espaliered (mid-17th century French from Latin) plants are trained to grow flat against a wall. While this age-old method historically was used for fruit trees and ornamental shrubs, its popularity has expanded in modern times to include any plant material, native or exotic, that can be trained in this fashion, such as magnolia, Lady Banks roses, and pyracantha. Lattice and similar framework are traditional supports for espaliered fruit and other types of trees, but permanently installed hooks with wires and other modern engineering options are available to carry higher and heavier loads.

Tower Gardens, made possible by modern technology, are a contemporary idea. One example is the hands-on tower garden project of the Princess Anne Garden Club in Virginia Beach that’s instilling a love of gardening while teaching environmental sustainability to the generation following Millennials (pre-K – 12th grade) in three public schools. The towers are 6’ x 4’ with slots for 28 plants, with herbs, vegetables and flowers grown in each cell, without soil; and each tower sits on a 20-gallon basin of nutrient rich water that supports the plant material. And they’re on wheels for easy movement.

This 21st century growing method is called aeroponic, with the root system aerated through misting with a nutrient-rich spray. It’s a first cousin to hydroponic growing methods that have been around a long time and which use a liquid nutrient solution for root immersion. I got my first glimpse of how efficient and effective this process can be on a behind-the-scenes tour at Disney World about 15 years ago. Thousands upon thousands of plants on high conveyer belts were producing abundantly to feed throngs of visitors. Will aeroponics and hydroponics, already used extensively in China, be the next “big thing” in the U.S. to address both environmental and economic issues in food production and home gardening?

Understated Elegance
In addition to prioritizing environmental concerns, contemporary garden design also reflects artistic and aesthetic values, which currently lean toward asymmetrical, angular, and pared down to essential elements tied together by hardscaping in a unified architectural sensibility. Current U.S. taste tends to draw more heavily on the Japanese Zen tradition than more elaborate and symmetrical layouts.

A “less is more” philosophy guides today’s design.

Hardscaping often creates the “garden bones” in contemporary designs that yews, boxwoods, and other workhorse plants provide in traditional gardens. Natural materials such as stone and slate continue in popularity, and manmade materials, including pavers that offer permeability, have come a long way aesthetically as well as functionally. With low maintenance as a goal, these gardens may have self-watering planters, be all green, or feature repeat patterns of only one plant, such as an interesting native grass. Or they may include several varieties planted in repetition for contrast.

Visual interest is on many different levels even in these sleek designs and may include vertical plantings on privacy or partition walls. A focal point is always necessary, and several focal points can be effective if judiciously placed. Good lighting is essential for a dramatic spotlight on prized features, as well as for safety on pathways and near potential hazards, such as pools and ponds.

As my millennial grandchildren would say about contemporary gardens, “This is not our grandmother’s garden!” This grandmother freely admits sentimental attachment to the design of her old-fashioned country cottage garden with organically shaped English borders overflowing with a lush jumble of hundreds of exotic and native plant species.

Yet, I also respect and am strongly drawn to the elegant, serene beauty of refined minimalist and other Zen-like contemporary concepts. These fit the millennials’ mindset to shed the shackles of traditional concepts of political partisan tribalism or strict precepts of traditional garden design they perceive as inconsistent with their values and priorities.

I get it. After all, I’m already a kindred spirit with millennials in their desire to sustain our environment.

Inspiration Through History and Culture
WORDS & PHOTOS BY SUSAN TIMMONS

As economics and culture go, so go gardens. Gardens inevitably reflect their time and place in history. From subsistence gardens that give sustenance for survival to glorious, grand-scale pleasure gardens that flaunt wealth and power, garden and landscape designs run the gamut.

Our ornamental gardens in Lynchburg typically fall comfortably between these two extremes. They have been greatly influenced by those that came before us yet are uniquely American both in design and plant material.

Setting the Standard

Let’s take a sweep through time to see how gardens evolved throughout Western civilization and consider what that means to us when we design our own garden. A good starting point is late 15th century Renaissance Italy, which boasted gardens prized for their design, elegance, and political and social message to complement villas of the ecclesiastic and secular wealthy around Rome and Florence. As the Renaissance progressed, villas and their companion gardens became increasingly larger and more elaborate, reflecting classical ideals of proportion, formal order and symmetry, architecture and literature, and the desire to impress.

Prime examples are the Medici’s Boboli gardens at the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Vatican gardens in Rome, and the magnificent 16th century High Renaissance Villa d’Este at Tivoli. The latter boasts a magnificent terraced garden featuring elaborate water courses, pools, fountains (including a water organ), a grotto, and delightful visual surprises at every turn. This garden exemplifies the typical Italian design of a central axis with cross axes leading the eye to focal points, terraces on the side of a steep hill affording spectacular vistas, and adornment with classical and mythical statuary. These and similar, albeit often less elaborate, gardens throughout Italy set the bar for ideal garden design for the Western world.

This basic standard for gardens was adapted in many ways as it spread eastward across the northern shores of the Mediterranean into France and Spain, where steep shorelines meant it took great effort to move the earth and chisel terraces out of high cliffs. Another challenge was to engineer increasingly clever ways to channel waters by advancing knowledge gained from the construction of Roman aqueducts. The reward was lush gardens with exotic plant material and spectacular views of the sparkling blue Mediterranean.

The formal Italian garden was climatically and culturally tailored and embellished through Renaissance France, with Versailles as an extreme example of the trophy garden to display worldly wealth and status. And the French took the idea of conquering and controlling nature to its utmost extreme with fantastic forms of precision topiary, elaborate open and closed parterres, dramatic water features, and endless sculptural and other ornamentation.

Then, of course, the English would not be outdone by the French, so formal Italian- and French-style gardens became the rage there too, and many still today accompany palaces and great country manor houses, such as those in the Cotswold Hills. At Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill, the formal Italian garden is nestled closest to the palace (for exclusive use of the residential Marlborough family and their guests), while the French, via Italian, influence is obvious in the terraced water features and classical sculptures that are open to the public.

The Focus Shifts

Then, in the 18th Century, along came the most famous English landscape designer, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who transformed the concept of gardens into a more relaxed design in tune with the natural landscape. He designed 170 or so parks and numerous estate gardens with a departure from classical formal symmetry and a celebration of the countryside beyond. His goal was to create gardens that looked as if they were nature’s own creation. But they only seemed so.

He, in fact, moved hills, created lakes, naturalized waterfalls, and strategically planted clumps of trees (a design feature adopted by Thomas Jefferson for Poplar Forest) to look as if they were there all along. Looking past the formal gardens at Blenheim Palace out toward the countryside is a showcase of “Capability” Brown’s brilliant artistry in nature. Thus was born “The English Landscape Style” that to this day influences our gardening here in Virginia.

Another significant shift that changed gardens and garden design forever resulted from the Industrial Revolution. Tools were developed, such as the lawnmower, to make cost and workload of planting and maintaining lawns and gardens manageable for middle class folks who couldn’t afford teams of hired gardeners. With new building materials and engineering skills, “glass houses” at London’s public Kew Gardens were constructed to shelter tropical and temperate plants from around the world for viewing by the general population. An appetite for gardening was, of course, whetted.

When Thomas Jefferson traveled in Europe, he embraced worldwide plant exchange. His fascination with plants and gardens compelled him to bring numerous exotic species of plants to America, and many have grown in popularity through the years.

As the middle class proliferated, well-designed public gardens grew in number and educational value. Love of gardening and interest in garden design was no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich and powerful. Gardening today in England and the U.S., and indeed around the world, has become one of the most popular hobbies and is accessible to almost everyone.

New Styles and Honored Traditions

English garden design further evolved through concepts developed by Gertrude Jykll (1843-1932), horticulturalist, garden designer, writer, and artist, who thoroughly understood plants, color theory, and other principles of art—line, form, structure, color. To her a garden was a blank canvas to which she could translate her knowledge into brilliant, artistic garden designs. Her robust combinations of color created exuberant flower borders that bloomed profusely in sequence as the gardening season progressed, and her aesthetic strategies and motifs have greatly influenced U.S. gardeners, including myself.

Vita Sackville-West, 20th century novelist and designer of the famous Sissinghurst Castle garden, masterfully embraced the concept of individual “garden rooms” with windows and doors in walls and yew hedges linking a multitude of rooms—each with a unique purpose, design, and character. Some of her other concepts expressed at Sissinghurst were mown grass paths, one-color gardens, and roses on brick walls (as we see in our Old City Cemetery). Another notable artistic English gardener was Rosemary Verey, who, according to a eulogy after her death in 2001, “brought the art of clipped boxwoods, laburnum walks and ornamental vegetable gardening to America.”

We in the U.S. continue to be greatly influenced by English garden designers/writers/lecturers, including modern-day experts Penelope Hobhouse (who designed many gardens in the U.S. as well as England), Mary Keen (who visited and spoke in Lynchburg last year), and Heidi Howcroft (who has also visited Lynchburg). The list of English garden gurus could go on and on. Most have taken historic concepts, refined them, created their own oeuvre, and taken our U.S. gardens to the next level. And we in Lynchburg listen to what they have to say.

As for U.S. garden designers, we already know that Thomas Jefferson, informed by his European travels, set the bar; and we must not forget landscape and garden architect/designer Charles Gillette, who in the first half of the 20th century so aptly created landscapes to pair with Colonial Revival architecture, most notably in Richmond, and earned fame as being the father of what’s known as the “Virginia Garden.”

Since our heritage continues to be of such value to us in Virginia, we revere Rudy Favretti, noted horticulturalist and designer of garden preservation and restoration projects, to complement historic sites, and William D. Rieley, landscape designer in Charlottesville, who works with the Garden Club of Virginia and serves as consultant for ongoing garden archaeological research at Poplar Forest to “honor the past while looking toward the future.”

Other Influences

As important as the evolution of garden design through Western civilization may be to us, it’s not the whole story. Let’s journey east from Italy, where West meets East, and consider that European gardens adopted many design motifs (as well as plants, such as the rose) from the East. Mogul gardens of Northern India were created with Muslim, Buddhist, Persian, Christian, and even Mesopotamian influences. These, like Italian gardens, adhere to principles of formal symmetry. They follow strict geometric and symbolic guidelines and proudly rely on mastering the flow of water, essential to exotic plant survival—a common denominator for all successful garden designs.

Far Eastern garden design also developed over a couple of thousand years. Rather than relying on formal symmetry, famous and elegant Chinese gardens, such as the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, create an entire landscape of rocks, water, plants, pagodas, and pavilions artfully compressed in a relatively small space. Every stone, structure, and horticulture specimen holds scholarly or spiritual significance. According to UNESCO, this and other gardens of Suzhou are the “most refined form” of the art of garden design.

Japanese gardens have certainly made their mark on the Western world. They, like Chinese gardens, can typify complex landscapes, but with cultural variations in their carefully-placed rocks, streams, meticulously pruned trees, and raked sand/soil—designed to stimulate intellectual and spiritual contemplation. Or they may be Zen minimalist, simple, and unadorned to invite meditation and serenity.

The most recent trends to influence our garden design are an outgrowth of environmental concerns. The Native Plant Movement, embracing the critical role of pollinators for bio-diversity and healthy ecosystems, has benefited from substantiation by scientific research translated into lay terms, most notably by Professor Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware. Understanding native plants and their value in home gardens is further changing the way we design our gardens to focus more on open, loose, and natural looks rather than closed, contrived, and exotic ones.

Designing YOUR Garden

I’ve been fortunate to experience guided tours of iconic gardens all over the world to inspire my vision for my own garden and make informed decisions on what would work for me in translating aspects of gardens from various cultures, and from grand scale to a smaller, simplified, more “human” scale. But if garden travel isn’t in your future, you can easily Google and read to help you sort through garden designs—historic and current trends.

What appeals to you? What’s your vision? And what will work for you? This is the starting point for any garden design.

To help answer these questions, consider your values, goals, desires, lifestyle, and personal preferences. Are you looking for material or spiritual rewards from your garden? Your ideal garden may be an elegantly designed showplace, or you may prefer as simple a setting as possible to grow your favorite flowers. It may be a retreat for private enjoyment of the senses of sight and sound or to soothe your soul. Or you may be looking for an attractive outdoor extension of your home as a garden room (or rooms) for dining, entertaining, relaxing, or playing.

Are you more of a scientist or an artist? You may be focused on growing, propagating, and sharing interesting and healthy plants or more interested in creative, eye-catching arrangements of color, shape, and form. Or you may want it all with a combination of these attributes. It’s not necessarily one or the other. But it is a matter of knowing yourself. It’s up to you to decide.

If all this is confusing or if you need help with your design, there are excellent professional landscapers and garden designers in our area to offer guidance and assistance. Although most of my gardening has been DIY (see my “DIY Garden Design in 8 Steps” on the following pages), I’ve sought help for specific design and planting challenges at times—both Rosser Landscaping & Design LLC and Rainfrost Nursery have offered excellent suggestions as well as quality plant material and workmanship. And don’t forget that the Hill City Master Gardener Association offers the free services of Master Gardeners to come to your home and offer advice.

You may choose to develop a grand garden scheme or master plan before lifting your first shovel full of soil, or you may let your garden design evolve over time, as mine did, by focusing on one challenge or section of your land at a time. Again, there’s no right or wrong way for home gardens. It’s your garden. Within constraints of law and a reasonable nod toward community cohesion, express yourself and do it YOUR way!

Meet the Gardener
Susan Timmons served in the 1970s as Virginia’s first Environmental Impact Statement Coordinator, then Assistant Administrator and Acting Administrator of Virginia’s Council on the Environment and editor of The State of Virginia’s Environment. During that time she also served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Environmental Professionals and received the National Wildlife Federation’s Award for Environmental Communications. More recently, she worked in higher education and nonprofit management and, in retirement, she serves as a member of the Speakers Bureau of the Hill City Master Gardeners Association with a series of talks on “Gardens of the World.”

Dig Deeper

www.rosserlandscaping.com
www.rainfrostnursery.com
www.hcmga.com

Driven by visions of sunny afternoons and backyard barbecues, we spend the spring preparing our homes for the warmer weather by sweeping off the porch, shopping for new patio furniture, and filling planters for the deck. This is an annual weekend ritual for many of us, but we tend to leave out one important component of our homes’ exteriors: the front door.

In…or Out?

When you’re in the throes of spring cleaning, evaluate your entryway and determine if the door is in good condition. Examine the bottom corners of wooden doors for rot or dents and look for rust on metal doors. Edward Coleman, owner of Anything Doors, points out that doors rot at the bottom corners where the threshold and doorjamb meet. “The only way to really fix it is to take the whole thing out and reframe it—you can try to patch it, but it’s like putting a band aid on the situation,” he explains.

Did you determine that your door needs replacing? Don’t just run out and buy any old exterior door—take advantage of the chance to change or add some style. Coleman notes that Chippendale doors are very popular in the Lynchburg area—in particular, the Williamsburg and the Monticello designs (see Cindy Greer’s great Chippendale door on page 21), according to Michael Pearl of Bailey Spencer Hardware. Pam Smith from Sentry Exteriors adds that many customers are coming in with requests for Craftsman-style wooden doors.

Also, don’t forget to look at your storm door. Is there a quick repair you can make that you just haven’t gotten around to yet? Now’s the time! Maybe it’s in good shape, but it needs some cleaning. If it’s rusted, broken, or otherwise taking away from the appeal of your entryway, you can replace it or just remove it. Storm doors are optional and totally a matter of personal preference.

Add Some Color

If you aren’t in the market for a new front door, but you recognize that yours could look lovelier than it does right now, why not make it a new color? Do not feel like you have to paint your front door to match your shutters. While that makes for a cohesive appearance,
it’s not a design necessity.

Check out these charming color combinations:
• Black shutters with a red door
• Brown shutters with an aqua door
• Navy shutters with an orange door
• Wooden shutters with a gray door
• White shutters and a green door

Smith notes that, surprisingly, yellow doors have become more popular recently. “It looks so pretty on a brick house especially—that or Tiffany blue—but you really have to love it,” she says. She suggests a dark stain on wood doors for a rustic look; if you’re interested in painting your door, Smith always recommends black. “It looks classic, timeless, and makes everything look clean and fresh—and your wreaths will pop!” she says.

If you go with a dark color for your door, be sure that the entryway has some sort of awning or covering over it. Coleman likes to remind homeowners that “if you paint your doors a dark color, it won’t last as long because the sun beats down on them, and if you have a storm door on top of a dark color, you’re just baking the door.” Not only will the paint inevitably fade and peel faster, but the door will also age faster, develop problems sooner, and ultimately not last as long.

Hardware and Accessories

Now that you’ve decided whether to keep, paint, or replace your door, consider updating your door’s hardware. After all, hardware can be both beautiful and functional, and many designers see hardware as furniture’s jewelry. If you’ve scoured the aisles or the internet looking for the just-right drawer pulls for your kitchen, have you thought about doing the same thing for your front door?

Pearl’s store carries solid brass hardware and hinges in five different finishes. “Some people hear solid brass and only think shiny yellow, but with other finishes (as in bronze or satin nickel), they can have rust-proof hardware that can withstand the seasons of Virginia.” Whether you choose brass, brushed nickel, wrought iron, or something else entirely, make sure that your metals match. Sure, mixing metals is en vogue right now (and Rolex has been doing it forever), but the one place where the mis-match looks like a mis-take is on the front door. From doorknockers to house numbers to the actual doorknobs themselves, keep it streamlined and down to one finish.

The door is new or clean and colorful, the hardware is gleaming—you’re almost there. Add a new welcome mat and, perhaps, a wreath, and you’re finished. (At least for now—there’s all the rest of that spring cleaning you need to do!)

It’s easy to recreate any look you see in a magazine or on TV with paint—and there are plenty of blog posts out there that will teach you how to do just that, step by step. After a while, though, those looks—those trends—grow tiresome. You start seeing the same paint color, the same backsplash, and the same mirrors at all of your friends’ houses, and it all becomes ubiquitous—not personal. You might have considered stenciling a wall, but that sounds like a lot of time (and a lot of work). What will you do?

Try wallpaper.

Using the right wallpaper in strategic places is one way to set your home apart in the sea of HGTV replicas. When you approach the way you decorate your home the same way you choose clothing for yourself, you select the right color, size and pattern that looks the best to you—and looks the best in your home.

What wallpaper can do for you

“Today’s wallpaper is fresh, new and clean, and can even look like wall texture or a painted-on design,” says interior designer Moyanne Harding of Interiors by Moyanne. Sydney Stephens, wallpaper specialist at James T. Davis, agrees and says there are wallpapers available now that have the look of tile, wood—even shiplap.

“There’s been an increased demand for wallpaper over the past year, especially from the younger generation,” Stephens reports. Millennials come in frequently, requesting wall coverings in grass cloth and geometric prints such as trellises.

What advantages does modern wallpaper have over paint?

• Revamps and refreshes your space
Harding likens wallpaper to a work of fine art. “It can transform a room like nothing else in an instant,” she explains.

• Conceals
“Wallpaper is really great for covering imperfections and unevenness in the walls,” says Stephens.

• Protects
Durable heavy-duty vinyl paper can be wiped and washed off, making it perfect for a kitchen or bathroom (or house with young children).

Fear not

While peel-and-stick and pre-pasted wallpaper are still available, a more popular option is the paste-to-wall product, which is what Stephens normally recommends since it’s easier to work with. “You roll the paste on the wall like a paint and then just stick the paper to it.” She also notes that the product stays wet for a little while, so you have some time to move it around if necessary. Today’s easy-strip products are also much more user-friendly than their predecessors were, so it won’t be as painful when the time comes to re-do a room.

Best applications

• Foyers, stairwells and bedrooms will make a grand impression with the right wallpaper, says Harding. She also likes to use it in closets (such as linen closets or larger walk-in closets) for a nice surprise, and in bathrooms.

• Stephens finds it really striking in dining rooms and kitchens.

• Thinking about an accent wall? Wallpaper adds a natural focal point when used sparingly.

• You can also use it in smaller applications, like framing wallpaper as art or adding punch and visual interest to the back of shelves.

Other tips and wisdom

After you put this magazine down and type in “wallpaper ideas” into Pinterest, Stephens recommends getting in touch with a professional so you can make sure you have the right products and the right directions on how to either hang or remove wallpaper.

If you’re still on the fence about the idea, ask yourself if you want your space to go from “ok” to “wow.” Harding shares this: “I always get a chuckle when I hear a resistant client because I know I am going to push them over to the other side of loving what wallpaper can do.”

IN 8 STEPS

1. Assess Your Space: Consider the size of your property, lay of the land, architectural style of your home, proximity to neighbors, and your design passions and preferences. For my half-acre backyard, I designed a free-flowing, casual country cottage garden featuring numerous organically-shaped borders and free-standing beds hugging the rolling terrain. This design complemented our colonial house on a farm cresting a hill in Bedford County. Yet, a more formal, symmetrical style may better suit other settings.

2. Face Unique Challenges and Opportunities First: My first challenge was to hide a honking metal utility barn from my landscape view. I planted a “green screen” as a buffer between the barn and the garden of my dreams, and in a couple of years that barn disappeared. My greatest design opportunity was views of Sharp Top and Flat Top mountains (and sunsets) to the west and Amherst County mountains beyond woods to the north. So, I made sure to take advantage of my borrowed landscape.

3. Budget $$, Time and Energy: Without an unlimited budget to spend on hiring professionals to design, plant, and maintain my garden, I developed it in incremental steps over 22 years, each year adding a new garden area and features. One year it was a rose garden. Another year it was building stone walls and paths. Yet another year it was a Crepe Myrtle allée up our driveway. With a full-time job many of those years, I had to budget my time and energy as well as money, so “slow and easy” was my motto.

4. Plan for Climate and Deer: Follow zone hardiness guidelines for planting. We’re in zone 7a, but we’ve experienced zone 6 conditions in recent winters. Plant material also needs to be suited to climate variances, or micro-climates, due to the lay of the land, sun or shade, windy or wind protected, and wet or dry. It’s frustrating and fruitless to plant a garden deer will eat, and I’ve not yet found a commercial product that keeps deer away permanently. Either stick to deer-resistant plants or build an adequate fence around your garden, as we did.

5. Select Plant Material: Decide on your garden “bones,” the hardscaping and foundation plants that set the shape and style of your garden. These include trees, shrubs, and other base landscape plants. Then select plants of different heights for vertical layering, with the tallest plants in the back of a border or center of a free-standing bed. Choose your plant preferences: exotics, natives, color, shape, size, and bloom time. Over time, add new plants as your taste and trends lead you.

6. Define Garden Areas and Prepare Your Soil: Mark the boundaries of your garden beds—whether they are a straight geometric pattern or a curving organic one. Then prepare the soil by removing undesirable plant material. As an environmentally sound option to using herbicides such as Roundup, cover the garden area with cardboard, black plastic, or other sun-blockers until the weeds are dead. Contact the Hill City Master Gardener Association
(www.hcmga.org) for a soil sampling kit and advice on what amendments are needed.

7. Plant, Water, Fertilize, and Watch Them Grow: Consider your water source and irrigation methods when deciding on what to plant where. And don’t underestimate the growing potential of plants. Most commercial labels on plants do not accurately tell us how large the plant will grow. So, leave space between new plants and allow room for them to grow, knowing your garden will continue to change with every new season. Over time, my full-sun garden grew into a sun-and-shade garden as new trees and shrubs matured.

8. Reassess, Rearrange, Transplant…and Leave Room for Serendipity: The joys and challenges of designing a garden include endless exciting opportunities for discovery and creativity. Unwelcome surprises with weather, pests, and diseases are inevitable, but afford opportunities. When my roses died of rose rosette disease, I replaced them with native plants. My garden design was also flexible enough to accommodate any plant a family member or friend gave me. These are gifts that touch my heart, and I could never design a garden that didn’t make room for them.

A COLLECTOR’S HAVEN

Though it may be unassuming from the outside, Christina Gerstner’s home is filled with beautiful treasures and new curiosities that lie around every corner. Gerstner has curated dozens of collections over the years—each infusing her home with color, nostalgia and meaning.

From the oversized, historic map of Lynchburg in the front hallway to the family portraits framing the dining room curio, Gerstner’s home provides endless visual delights and conversation pieces. Stemming from her mother’s love of antiquing and vintage shopping—something they did together while Gerstner was growing up—her home today has evolved into an artistic showcase for the distinctive items she’s gathered over a lifetime spent collecting.

After marrying her husband Josh in 2006, they moved to Lynchburg for his work as a data analyst; Gerstner taught at a Montessori school until the birth of their son, Orion. About eight years ago they purchased their current home, and in the time since, they’ve completely renovated the kitchen, updated the den and changed the paint throughout.

But more than anything it’s Gerstner’s unique and eye-catching displays of vintage wares that put the home in a class of its own. Whether her floor-to-ceiling collection of historic, panoramic yard photos or her colorful, embroidered maps of the United States, Gerstner’s passion for collecting has now spilled over into a small business that keeps her quite busy selling items online. Her personal collections and Etsy shop, “The White Pepper Vintage,” have even garnered her attention and features in Country Living, Apartment Therapy and HuffPost.

The reason behind it all is pretty simple according to Gerstner: “It’s what I love,” she says. “I focus on what I’m drawn to and what I love.”

A Collector’s Haven

Her decorating style is decidedly vintage.

“When I try to go outside of that niche, such as a rustic or minimal style, I just can’t do it; I get bored,” Gerstner says. “I realized it’s just not me.”

Though current trends lean more towards neutral and gray colors, Gerstner says she has to have florals: “I have always, always loved anything floral or embroidered—I would wear stuff like that when I was a kid.” And, she also has to have lots of color— yellow in particular.

“It’s always been my favorite,” she says. “It makes an appearance everywhere in our house.” Indeed, one of her most prized discoveries includes a pair of tufted yellow chairs that she picked up at an estate sale.

In their front room, Gerstner has a wall of shelves filled with books and tchotchkes—“I’m wild about vintage books!” she says; some she has organized by color (all red or all yellow) and some in rainbow sets (a few of each color to span the spectrum), and some she has organized topically such as copies of Nancy Drew that she read as a girl, Hardy Boy titles that her husband read and books all about New England and Maine where she grew up.

“I try to bring in things that are meaningful to me,” she says, referring to the books. “I’m just delighted when I find another to add to the collection.”

Gerstner’s collections span all categories of vintage: baskets, silhouettes, furniture, linens, artwork, and even kitchen wares. In fact, most of her daily dishes and food storage containers are vintage finds or inherited from family relatives, such as her husband’s grandmother named Rosie.

You Can, too:

How to Incorporate Vintage Items with Other Décor

1) “Books are always a good place to start,” says Gerstner. Books have very low price points, so affordability makes them easy to pick up, plus they add instant character. You can organize them by color to increase visual interest or topically—just select a place, author or topic that appeals to you already.

2) Add in furniture here or there as you discover inter-esting pieces. Gerstner has incorporated wooden mail sorter catalogues to use as shelving and desks, a butcher block for their kitchen island, chairs for the living room and a tufted blue bench in the dining room. By working in vintage pieces with more current pieces such as couches or book shelves, she’s adding
unique and purposeful statement pieces.

3) “Wall art is a great option as well,” Gerstner says. It’s an easy collection to start because there tends to be an abundance of choices; prices are reasonable, and you can easily switch items in and out as your collection grows. Plus, the variety of framing and mat options available today provide nearly endless possibilities.

4) Follow your heart. Gerstner’s home is a testament to the items she personally loves and feels naturally drawn to; because of that, her daily surroundings are filled with what she truly enjoys. Try doing the same, no matter your home style, and you’ll find yourself pleased with the result.

To bring it all together, she prioritizes color and style all while looking for a cohesive feel within each collection as a whole.

She also tries to make a “collection personal to [their family] and meaningful” whenever possible. And she’s found many creative ways to utilize family heirlooms, whether placing a grandmother’s afghan out for display or showcasing a photo of her mom as a young girl.

Gerstner’s background with the Montessori philosophy has also influenced her approach to decorating. “One of the things that Dr. Montessori loved, and one of the hallmarks of her philosophy, was creating a beautiful environment for children,” Gerstner says. “Focus is always placed on a peaceful, calm, accessible environment.”

Sharing Her Finds With the World

Gerstner officially started her online shop at the end of 2011 thinking it would be a good option for offloading some of her extra items; plus, she had recently left her teaching job after the birth of her son, so she “figured it would give me something to do [and] let me make a little bit of money.” To her surprise, the shop more than took off, with national and international buyers alike, and she hit her 5,000th sale this past December.

“I had no idea it would ‘be something’,” she says of the Etsy shop. “Now, the more I list, the more I sell; I can slow down as needed or spend 40 or more hours a week on it.”

The process is time-intensive, including the buying, cleaning, photographing, editing, posting, packaging and shipping of each item, but Gerstner says she is addicted to the hunt, always picking up new items, so she has to keep the shop going or be at risk of overflowing her already bursting inventory, which, as of this time, is tallied at over 1,000 items in her basement; her Etsy shop typically has anywhere from 250-400 of those items for sale.

As to where she finds all of these treasures, she says it’s a mix of estate sales, antique shops and thrifting—all over the country!

“I’ll go visit family, and I can fit a coffee table in the car top carrier,” Gerstner says of traveling with their CRV. And, she adds with a laugh, “We pack light on clothes to save space for my stuff; my husband is very tolerant; he knows this is my ‘jobby’…it’s something that I really like doing.”

Deciding what to buy is relatively simple, she says, “I basically try to sell a lot of what I love and just hope that there are other people out there who love it too.”

See more of Christina’s discoveries on Facebook at The White Pepper and follow her on Instagram @TheWhitePepperVintage.

You Can, too:

Why You Should Start a Collection

1) It’s Pure Fun. A huge part of the appeal for Gerstner is the hunt itself. Once you start a collection, “It’s fun to go out looking for a companion piece,” she says. “You find one [item], and then you have to hunt for another; there’s a lot of fun in that—and it can be fun to bring them into your home.”

2) You’ll Make Unique Discoveries.
As Gerstner’s experience has shown, you never know what you will find. “Unique items are much more interesting to me,” Gerstner says, referring to items that have a story and can’t be found in a generic big box store. Some of her best finds include embroidered maps, vintage bracelets and jewelry plus her beloved yellow chairs.

3) It Can Be a Family Affair. Gerstner’s mom got her started in vintage shopping and collecting, and it became something they enjoyed doing together over the years. Today, Gerstner enjoys staying on the lookout for items her family may appreciate— usually something music-related for her husband and owl items for her son. Gifts are even more memorable when you can find a surprise addition for a loved one’s collection.

Would you give your friend a baby or a puppy? That’s the stock reply from local bonsai expert, Julian Adams, when people ask him to sell them a bonsai tree as a gift for a friend. Julian, a master grower of bonsai, knows first-hand from 47 years of experience the tremendous amount of nurture and perseverance it takes to keep a bonsai thriving. He knows it requires daily time and attention and an appreciation of just what bonsai is and means. To Julian, it’s 50 percent horticulture, 50 percent art, and 50 percent philosophy. Yep. That adds up to bonus points for those who are passionate about bonsai. And he is.

What is bonsai?
To Westerners, it’s the Japanese name for a small, stylized tree typically grown in a shallow container.

The word bonsai in Japanese translates literally into “planting in a container, dish, or tray” and was developed as part of the practice of Zen Buddhism. From there, it caught on in more recent times in Western countries—first in Europe, and then in the United States.

Today, bonsai aficionados practice their science, art, and philosophy across the United States, with several experts right here in Lynchburg.

Prior to its refinement as a horticultural practice and art form in Japan, most sources trace the derivation of bonsai back to China, where it is called pen-sai or penjing. Some sources even claim that before traveling to China, the practice originated in ancient India where ayurvedic physicians collected medicinal trees from the wild and grew them in pots in miniature form.

Whatever the roots of bonsai tradition, it’s been around for well over a thousand years, and it’s all about roots and shoots—and controlling them to create the tree you desire given the nature and characteristics of the specimen. Bonsai trees are not genetically dwarfed plants. They have the same genetic properties as their kindred full-sized trees but achieve their miniature size through human control.

The goal is to create a realistic representation of nature in the miniature form of a tree while keeping the height under four feet, with most bonsai typically even shorter than that. But size classifications are disputed. One source declares that to be a true bonsai the tree cannot exceed one meter (3.28 feet), while another classification scheme declares a range from minute Keshitsubo (1-3 inches) up to Imperial (60-80 inches).

Picking a Specimen
Since most bonsai trees are grown outdoors, they experience the same seasonal and weather conditions as their full-sized relatives. Your specimen here can be one of many different deciduous or evergreen species if it can be grown in Climate Zone 7 and in your own micro-climate and conditions (sun, shade, windy, protected from wind, etc.). Native trees and exotics that share our climate preferences are a safe bet for growing outdoors as bonsai in our area, but if your preference is a tropical tree, it will need protection from our winters in a greenhouse or indoors with sufficient light.

Growing bonsai successfully requires sound horticultural practices and techniques. That’s the 50 percent science part of the practice, and I think that’s why most successful Lynchburg bonsai growers with extensive collections are those with scientific curiosity and background, such as engineering and medicine. This scientific approach is especially required of growers such as Julian who embrace the full range of bonsai practice. He propagates his own trees from cuttings, air-layering, grafting and seeds, and cultivates hundreds of specimens to maturity.

On the other hand, many enthusiasts don’t attempt to start from scratch, but rather select small already-rooted trees with potential directly from the woods, their yards, or other available sources to create bonsai. The important criteria are that the plant has a woody trunk or stem, grows branches, has leaves that can be reduced in size, and can be grown in a container. For most trees, it’s best to transplant in its dormant season.

Then there are some bonsai enthusiasts who want only to maintain with minimal manipulation one or more trees and begin with already mature and basically-trained plants. I was at that end of the spectrum when 30-some years ago I became enamored with bonsai and purchased a lovely decades-old Hinoki Cypress. My highly-valued bonsai was easy to grow and maintain. It wasn’t fussy about pH, required little more than full sun, daily watering and good drainage, and was fun to progress with pruning and shaping the already established composition. But after three years of success with it, I managed to bring it close to death.

Back to Julian’s point about babies and puppies, I learned the hard way that I wasn’t a good candidate for bonsai ownership. My family and I started spending summers at a cottage at the “Rivah,” and I entrusted my prized bonsai to an employee back at home in Danville who let it sit in a pan of water for days on end rather than following my instructions to check and water it daily. Without drainage, root rot almost claimed it.

I was horrified by the sight of it when I thought back on all the years of tender care that had brought it this far. The good news is that a local bonsai expert restored it to heath, and I gifted it to her in humble gratitude and appreciation for her skill and superior stewardship. She then was gracious enough to allow me to borrow it for display in my home on special occasions.

Getting Started
I hope you’ll take my almost-disastrous experience with bonsai as a lesson learned, rather than discouragement, and will try it. It’s a fun practice offering a stunningly rewarding product for those with time, patience, and dedication. First envision the shape, style, and design of your specimen as it matures, gleaning inspiration from the natural inclination of your specimen.

Then after trimming roots and branches to achieve the desired effect, plant it in a container that most effectively displays your composition and restricts roots and food storage capability.

Simple and understated earthenware Japanese pots and more decorative Chinese pots are traditional, but anything works if it can support the tree and frame it unobtrusively.

Many growers use a special potting mix to encourage drainage and control nutrients. Specific care relates to the species, but typically, fertilizers are used sparingly. Watering regularly and draining that water are essential, as well as placing the bonsai in the proper location for sun or shade, etc. Placement may change as conditions and seasons dictate to afford protection from storms or harsh winter weather. Julian displays most of his bonsai collection on raised benches at a good working height except in hard winter when they are placed on the ground for root warmth and shielded from potentially damaging winds.

Training the tree to your desired composition includes periodically trimming roots, pruning and wiring branches with a specific type and grade of copper wire, and pinching buds to redirect healthy growth. Once the copper wire has been wrapped around a branch that you wish to train in a specific direction, you can carefully manipulate that branch (within reasonable limits of course) to suit your composition. Step-by-step tutorials are available for those ready to take the plunge, and Julian will be happy to sell you just the right grade and quantity of copper wire.

You might also want to follow Julian’s lead and grow bonsai from cuttings, air layering, grafting, or seeds and experience the joy of nurturing your bonsai from its beginning into a mature creation that fulfills your design vision. Just remember that newbies are very fragile and require constant attention since they must not be allowed to dry out. And we all know what summers are like in Lynchburg.

So, here’s where Julian’s engineering background and ingenuity kick in: He’s invented a fascinating Rube Goldberg type of device that’s hooked up to an outdoor water faucet and triggers a thorough misting of the newbies when a delicate paddle dries out and kicks the water on. On a scorching August afternoon, this might happen every 20 minutes or so. And tiny sun-loving, outdoor plants are thriving.

Artistry
The point isn’t to replicate the growth pattern of the full-sized tree in nature, but rather to create your own artistic design. While some bonsai artists prefer a more natural look or even believe that the primary goal of bonsai is to create a realistic depiction of nature, others prefer a more contrived or dramatic effect through human intervention. There’s no absolute right or wrong answer. It’s a matter of preference.

In bonsai, there is a delicate balance between nature and nurture. You are controlling nature within the bounds of what’s humanly possible—stretching limits, while remaining sensitive to, respectful of, and constrained by nature.

Some specimens, especially very small ones, become quite abstracted from nature, and the smaller the specimen, the more fragile its existence. Bonsai can be so abstracted that they only suggest a tree. As with any work of art, differences in aesthetic determine preferences in composition, style, and the degree to which the grower manipulates the plant. Styles can be upright, slanting line, weeping or cascading, and more. And a popular shape is the asymmetrical triangle.

An amazing aesthetic pleasure of bonsai is the character and beauty of twisted and gnarly trunks and branches of aged trees that still produce robust foliage intertwined with deadwood and intriguing bark patterns. Bonsai artists carefully prune back selected foliage to expose interesting trunk and limb structure. Tip: Compositions are usually easier to manage with trees that have smaller leaves in nature. Leaf size will be further reduced through pruning limbs and roots. Bold surface roots also add visual interest, and some exposed roots can be trained to grow over relatively large rocks or in a variety of interesting patterns.

Many bonsai enthusiasts take their artistry to another level with additional elements to create miniature landscapes with more than one plant and include rocks, ground covers, small figurines, and other accoutrements. Some are detailed enough to represent miniature cliffs, mountains, islands, and other natural phenomena that add interest. The ideal is for each tree to be viewed in its overall relationship with the elements surrounding it.

A bonsai is never completed, and it may be remodeled if the age and health of the tree or style preference of the grower dictate a different path. Or there may be many caretakers for one tree over the span of its life, since with careful care and attention, some bonsai live for hundreds of years. One prize-winning specimen owned by a bonsai master in Japan is reported to be over 800 years old and is a work of art worth a small fortune.

Beyond Science and Art
Bonsai is much more than a successful melding of science and art. Each tree is unique and invites personal reflection, interpretation beyond the physical creation itself, and inspiration for poets and essayists.

Every aspect of a bonsai is laden with symbolism and meaning—the type of tree selected, the container, and aesthetics of composition and style. While some of the symbolism rooted in Eastern mythic and religious thought may be a bit obscure to us, other symbolism is easily grasped. For example, knotty, gnarled trunks and branches evoke consideration of the passing and toll of time.

With each change of season, bonsai offers new delights in shape, size, color, and meaning. Emerging spring green leaves, lush summer foliage, vibrant fall colors, and bright winter berries all offer fodder for appreciation of life’s mysteries in a journey though time.

Bonsai as a horticulture and artistic practice, hobby, or obsession is a challenge on many levels to our gardening and horticulture capabilities, aesthetic and design sense, patience and perseverance, and time. Yet as a reward, it offers endless hours of pleasure, beauty, and spiritual growth.

As we learn from Zen Buddhist practice, countless hours of meditation in the presence of bonsai can lead to enlightenment. Celebrated Japanese Bonsai Master and philosopher Saburo Kato’s hope for bonsai is that it will “keep the torch of peace burning throughout the world.”

Contact Julian Adams at (434) 384-7951 or www.adamsbonsai.com.

Local Designer Shares Best Secrets for Natural, Simplified Living

Set back from the road with a slate walkway leading to its inviting front door, Selena and Jamie Campbell’s home is a study in the power of simplicity and purpose. While their color palette is “down to earth,” so to say, the effect is anything but.

Selena’s keen eye and knack for creative design solutions coupled with Jamie’s woodworking skills have allowed them to create a beautiful Campbell County home that’s both purposeful and personal throughout.

And when they built on their two-acre lot 10 years ago, it was with some very specific goals in mind.

“We knew we wanted something different from ‘the cookie-cutter’ look,” Selena says. “Lots of natural light was a priority and lots of closets.”

As a result, they adjusted the house plans in several ways: larger windows for the kitchen and master bedroom plus French doors off the dining area were added to let in more light; sky lights in the vaulted living room ceiling also prioritized natural light while additional closets in the upstairs bedrooms yielded plenty of storage options.

In the years since, Selena, who owns an interior decorating business called Middle Sister Design, has continually tweaked their décor and spaces to better suit their needs and taste. Over the last few years especially, she has transitioned the home in two primary ways: updating to a neutral color palette throughout and decluttering every nook and cranny.

“We both enjoy being outdoors and have a great appreciation for the beauty of nature,” Selena says. “We love the serenity of the neutral, earth-inspired palette we’ve established in our home.” Selena believes the soothing colors help them to feel relaxed and have a calming effect. Rather than having bright and competing colors from room to room, she’s transitioned to lots of white and other airy neutrals.

To make this work without leaving the home feeling too bare, Selena has worked in a variety of textures and finishes. In the kitchen, that means they used beadboard for the backsplash, selected shaker-style cabinets, and built a shiplap wall. In the living area, she chose a variety of fabrics and embellishments in the form of pillows and throws to soften the space.

And one can find natural pieces in every room, where items such as oversized driftwood and plants abound. Not only do they all complement the natural aesthetic, they each tell a story as well.
Selena’s sister Heather, for instance, found one of the largest pieces of driftwood in the James River and brought it back for her. Laughing, Selena says many river adventures—and fishing boats—have been hijacked to retrieve unique driftwood pieces for her home. A bit of scrubbing and some bleaching is all she has to do to finish them for interior use.

While the move toward neutral has been a huge transformation, Selena’s biggest undertaking may arguably be the massive decluttering journey she started a few years ago. This process is one reason why the story or associated memory of an item is so important.

Selena’s tried and true questions to ask when decluttering include:
“What is the monetary value of said item? What is the sentiment behind it, if any? Do you have a place to store this item in an organized fashion that does not take up space?”

Over the last two years, she’s pared down her home to only those items that have particular purpose or meaning to her and Jamie; some favorites include “stones collected from beaches around the world with dates written on them [that] are displayed in a pretty jar” and wine corks from memorable bottles enjoyed with friends and family. Souvenirs from shared travels to St. Lucia or Cadillac Mountain in Maine are also displayed along with Selena’s books on interior design, a glass jar collection from an abandoned old home explored with her aunt, antlers gifted to her by friends and much more.

Her home design mantra could be summarized as this:
“A home should tell the story of and reflect the personalities of the individuals who reside there. Having meaningful, purposeful décor gives a space personality…and aids in telling that story.”

And having decluttered, Selena notes several additional benefits. “The lack of clutter sets a sense of calmness within me that is difficult to describe,” she says. “Besides, who wants to lift 222 knick-knacks to dust underneath or rummage through?”

Having been born and raised in Campbell County, Selena’s country roots and strong family ties are all represented in her home with Jamie. The natural elements speak to her appreciation for “nature and the beauty of the outdoors” while her business as an interior designer is a direct result of her years spent observing her mom’s decorating and practicing her own ideas on her sisters’ Barbie houses as a young girl. Jamie, also a Virginia native, currently works as an engineer for AREVA, but has built several pieces in their home and continues to bring many of Selena’s ideas to life.

Today, the couple has plenty of projects still in the pipeline; “there’s always something stewing up here!” Selena says. Later this year, they hope to build raised beds for their garden, rig up some permanent shade solutions on the western-facing back deck, and work on finishing some permanent guest space in the basement.

Follow their progress and other home projects on Selena’s Instagram page “MiddleSisterDesign” and on her blog at www.MidSisterDesign.com.

Photography by Tera Janelle Auch

While driving down Thomas Jefferson Road in Forest, there are two vistas sure to catch your eye at any time of year: the Peaks of Otter and a sprawling brick Georgian Colonial. When it comes to Christmastime, however, the brick manor steals the show.

Rachel and Wayne Beeler don’t just deck the halls—they garnish the gazebo, embellish the fountain, and make sure that every view indoors and out points to the Christmas season. “I just love being happy, and I love to help other people feel happy—that’s one of the reasons that I do all of this every year,” Rachel explains.

She has always loved Christmas, but she didn’t start decorating for the holiday room by room until the Beelers moved to Poplar Forest and began adding several small Christmas trees in other rooms here and there over the years. That was more than 20 years and 20 trees ago, before the Beelers began looking for a home “with a little land.” Their current home is not only gracious in acreage, but also comes with more square footage, and more rooms means more Christmas trees.

While the rest of us are busy decorating with pumpkins and scarecrows, Rachel starts thinking about Christmas. “The children love to come trick-or-treating here, and not only because I give out the best candy!” she smiles. Kids in costumes are delighted to see a 12-foot tree in the foyer when they stop by. Preparations for the season commence at the beginning of October, starting by bringing all of the accoutrements out of storage. Rachel used to manage all of the decorations herself and didn’t necessarily want help: “I was raised to work,” she explains, starting with her job at Chapstick on the conveyor lines and then spending 16 years working for GE. Rachel remains diligent and has not forgotten her roots, but she has discovered that her energy levels have changed after having had—and beaten—thyroid cancer several years ago. “Now I have a team of 15 to 20 elves that come in over the course of the fall who help me set it all up,” she explains.

From the St. Nick in the fountain and near life-sized nutcrackers, all the hard work pays off. It’s impossible to feel that you haven’t entered a branch of Santa’s workshop or a North Pole satellite location when you pull up the driveway. You might see Kris Kringle and the missus themselves setting up shop in the gazebo, or small elves in the nooks and crannies of bookcases. Chandeliers, headboards, mirrors, even the bath—all receive the special Beeler treatment.

Like most of us, Rachel likes to change up her décor each year, finding new places for treasured adornments, and adding a few updates to her collection. She enjoys shopping everywhere for interesting decorations, but her favorite place to find decorations is Hobby Lobby. She shares that for years she had kept hearing about Hobby Lobby on the radio, but she’d never been in one. So when she and Wayne (owners of Sterling Oil) were out making deliveries one day and they passed by a Hobby Lobby, she just had to get out of the car and check it out. “I thought it was going to be a hobby store—and it is—but I had no idea that they carried home goods, too. I thought I had died and gone to heaven; it was Christmas everywhere in there!” Even though the Beelers arrived at the store with a pick-up truck packed with AC units to deliver to customers, Rachel had the sales clerk package up all of her goods and strap them down to the truck.

“Wayne likes to joke that [stopping at Hobby Lobby] was the ‘worst mistake’ of his life,” Rachel laughs.

A native of Bedford County’s Nicopolis community, Rachel met local Lynchburger Wayne Beeler in the early ’60s when she and her gal pals would have fun cruising Wards Road between checking out Lindy’s Big Boy and The Southern in her cousin Esther’s 1964 Chevrolet. It was on one of those nights that Rachel spotted Wayne driving his red 1963 Chevrolet. “I looked at the girls and said, ‘I’m going to marry that man.’” She was right—the Beelers just celebrated 51 years of marriage this past May. They have a reminder of that Chevy in the form of a figurine they keep in the downstairs TV room, where they like to relax.

Wayne and Rachel, who wed during her senior year of high school, found themselves heading out to Oregon when Wayne was in the Air Force. That’s where they celebrated their first Christmas. While she isn’t sure if she still has any mementos from that first year, Rachel certainly has a fond memory of being a new wife at Christmas.

“I set a small tree on a table, took a picture of it, and sent it home to show my family a bit of our Christmas out West. Well, would you believe that we started getting gifts from my family in the mail? They sent us gifts because they felt sorry for us that we didn’t have much of anything under the tree—they thought it was so pitiful,” she laughs, “but the truth was that we were as happy as could be with our little tree and just being together.”

The Beelers came back to Lynchburg soon after and bought a home off Timberlake Road, which they own to this day. “We loved that house,” she reminisces of the house where they raised their two children, Donna and Mike. All of the family, including the Beelers’ grandchildren, live nearby and enjoy spending time at Rachel’s home, especially during the holidays.

People come from all over the area to see the Beelers’ tasteful and traditional displays. After Thanksgiving, Rachel begins hosting tours of her holiday home for different groups (e.g. church groups and women’s clubs).

“I love seeing everyone’s reactions and the expressions on their faces. People feel happy when they come through; I love seeing that.”

Tours conclude with refreshments in her year-round party room, a former garage that the Beelers converted into a banquet area. Eight round tables and Chivari chairs accommodate 32 guests. This room, of course, receives the special Beeler Christmas treatment, and she keeps it ready for year-round entertaining, switching décor seasonally (they also host Easter and an annual barbecue). This is where the family hosts relatives, close family friends, and her “elves” for a country-style Christmas breakfast.

Her current take on getting her home holiday-ready is very different from her first December as a newlywed; still, she has always remembered that very first Christmas season. Just like the Christmases from her childhood, it served as a celebration of hope, joy and love. All of her decorating stems from this deeply nostalgic and spiritually personal place of bringing joy to others. “We had so much love at Christmas. I mean,
we had a lot of love all year round, but we felt it so strongly at Christmas. Our celebrations were meaningful,” says Rachel.

“Love—that’s what we had at Christmas,” Rachel recalls, and that is what she strives to bring to her home and to her guests every year.

How to Add Color to your home for the holidays

Every year, Rachel Beeler evaluates each room’s purpose and colors to determine its seasonal treatment. For most of us, red and green forms a twosome synonymous with Christmas, but those aren’t the only hues available for holiday decorating. Take a cue from Rachel and add Christmas décor beyond the living room: consider the prevalent palette of each room to find which Christmas color combo will work best for that space. Here are a few to try:

1. White and metallics such as gold or silver (or a mix of the two) offer plenty of shine and glimmer.

2. Gold and purple, the colors of royalty, seem right for this season of heralding a newborn king.

3. White, silver, and forest green evoke the palette of wintry landscape and play well with neutrals.

4. Jewel tones, such as the kind Rachel uses in her holiday dining room, look refined when paired with metallics, but they also provide a dose of whimsy when used with lime green.

5. Sage green and ivory always look elegant and give a nod to nature.

THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

Eyes sparkling and squirming with mpatience, I sat at the top of the stairs in my flannel gown and robe and awaited Mom’s green light before charging down to the living room to the wonder of a decorated tree shimmering over Santa’s bounty.

It was the crack of dawn, and I felt like a racehorse at the gate while Mom started the percolator, plated the Dresden Stollen, and eyed a cursory sweep under the tree to assure she hadn’t forgotten anything. (Some months later, Mom would inevitably discover an overlooked gift buried in the back of an overstuffed closet.) Then Dad flipped the switch to the multi-colored tree lights, and my sisters and I were invited down to begin our Christmas day.

And year after year (even after I knew the secret of Santa), I was thrilled at my first glimpse of the annual magic of our sometimes symmetrical, real fir tree adorned with lightbulbs shaped like flames or bubbling-candles, along with an unabashed mix of old and new, elegant and cheesy glass balls—plus ornaments passed down from my grandmother and silvery tinsel (lead-based until the FDA declared it a hazard) draped a single strand at a time. And occasionally candy canes hooked over the ends of boughs. This miracle of the decorated tree was executed without fail every Christmas Eve after kids’ bedtime. Not a day or an hour before. It was always the greatest Christmas morning gift; and the tree stayed up until New Year’s Eve. This was my memory of the tradition in my family circa 1950s and ’60s.

Christmas Tree History
According to my friend, Mary Kathryn McIntosh, a walking encyclopedia of Christmas history and lore, Christmas traditions date back to 1605 with the first mention in a diary of an indoor evergreen in Strasbourg decorated with paper roses, apples, gilded candies, and more; and the practice caught on in Germany. Fifty years later candles were added to indoor trees (yes, a fire hazard).

The first documented Christmas tree in Virginia was in 1842, and in 1849 Virginia became the 5th state to legally recognize Christmas. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert then popularized Christmas trees in the U.S. after setting up a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle that appeared (without mentioning their titles) in America’s Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1850. With the abundance of trees in our Commonwealth, the tradition was easily established.

Trees were ornamented with glass balls, chains of beads, toys, and all sorts of memorabilia, and some were even hung upside down from the ceiling to spare sparse floor space. And it seems that whenever and wherever they are, they always spread their celebratory limbs to embrace family gifts and childhood pleasures.

In 1877, five years after Edison invented the light bulb, electric lights made their way to Christmas trees, and by 1900, one in five families had a tree. It seems it took a long time, however, for improvements in tree lights. Until recent times, I can recall laboriously testing each individual light socket when one bulb went out and took the whole strand out with it. While I’m at it, another big improvement is deeper and more accessible water vessels to prevent dehydration.

In the 21st century, Christmas tree farms have become a business that’s grown into a $1 billion industry. The big box stores are the largest sellers, although I still favor a local garden center with a direct pipeline to a western North Carolina Fraser fir farm.

Carrying on Family Traditions
When it became my turn to be the grown-up and carry on family Christmas tree traditions with my own children, I abandoned tinsel and my parents’ frenetic practice of decorating the tree on Christmas Eve. While still cherishing those childhood memories, I initiated new, and easier traditions of my own—some better; some that turned out to be not so good. I did, however, retain the tradition of a natural tree in favor of an artificial tree in white, blue, or other trendy themes and styles.

And I created a memory tree laden to this day with my own childhood Storybook dolls, handcrafts and other memorabilia from world travels, gifts from family and friends, and items made by our own children or myself. Each ornament tells a sentimental or spiritual story; my needlepoint Santa shares a tree limb with a tuna can crafted into a manger scene by one of our sons in Sunday School 50 or so years ago. Oh, and our tree sports a pair of baby shoes from each of our five sons, and my heart is full every Christmas as I place them on the tree. An angel is the topper, and she watches over it all.

A new tradition that didn’t turn out so well was when in the 1970s, my firstborn son Reid and I strung popcorn, piece by laborious piece, to drape our tree with natural garlands instead of tinsel. That’s the good part. The not-so-good part is that I couldn’t bear to throw the garlands out after the holidays, so I tucked them in a box in a storage area where mice discovered a bonanza of Christmas dinners to last them the rest of the winter. That was a short-lived tradition.

Many years later when I moved to Bedford County, a new tradition was to make a family outing out of selecting our own tree on our farm, and we usually picked one of our overly-plentiful cedars. As we aged and finally admitted we were tired of facing the New Year with a floor full of dropped needles and scratchy twigs when hauling the crispy cedar to the burn pile, we turned to North Carolina grown Fraser firs, a most satisfactory fresh tree.

Now, as seniors living in a second-floor condo, we’ve of necessity ceded fresh trees to a less labor-intensive artificial tree with built-in lights, and I continue to decorate it the same as always. I admit modern fake trees do look real—well almost—but I still think authentic fresh trees are best.

Doors, Mantles, Tables, and More
I continue with the old-fashioned tradition of decorating mantles, tables, and other spaces with fresh greens and berries. What’s more beautiful at Christmas and makes the house smell better than sprigs of Fraser fir, pine, spruce, and boxwood on a bed of shiny magnolia leaves punctuated and enlivened by holly berries? One of my favorites for dramatic splash is Winterberry holly.

I love fresh green garlands wrapped along stair banisters and hanging mistletoe on a “kissing ball,” but they’re traditions I’ve also let go. Come to think of it, I don’t see mistletoe in homes these days. Maybe folks in my age group are less interested in being caught under the mistletoe—or maybe shooting mistletoe out of trees for those kissing balls has pretty much gone by the boards, at least for city folks.

Door and window wreaths of fresh greens continue as a long-standing Virginia tradition, and my old standby is a classic combination of magnolia leaves and boxwood that can be dressed up with berries, nuts, pinecones, and any other imaginative materials that are handy and strike my fancy. It’s fun to alternate the front and back of magnolia leaves for a lovely combo of green and copper.

To create your own wreath, start with a pre-made form and u-shaped picks from a hobby store, and fasten overlapping magnolia leaves one at a time around the entire circle in a pattern that pleases you. Boxwood wreaths can be made the same way, and you can combine the two and/or other greens, making wreaths one-sided or two-sided for hanging on glass doors or windows. If you’re looking for a quick splash of color to tie in with your decor, add a bow. And, voila!

Stepping It Up
If you’d like to step it up to the next level, try making a della Robbia–style wreath, the crème-de-la-crème of festive fresh wreaths. Inspiration for these reaches back to the 1440s when Italian sculptor Luca della Robbia invented the technique of vibrant polychrome tin-glazed terracotta statuary. He passed his form of artistry down to family members who continued to produce decorated terracotta reliefs edged by beautifully modeled wreaths of brilliantly hued flowers, fir cones, and fruits such as apples, oranges, and lemons.

Today’s della Robbia Christmas decorations in natural materials may be in the form of a round wreath, shaped to fit an architectural space above a door or windows, or other forms. Just start with building a basic wreath or form with magnolia leaves, boxwood, and/or other natural materials such as red cedar, pine, mountain laurel, rosemary, or ivy. Then, using wired picks, affix flowers, berries, and fruit to please your personal taste. In addition to apples, oranges, and lemons, try adding pineapple, limes, pomegranates, and cranberries. Dried flowers, rose hips, pinecones, and okra pods are other options. Your della Robbia creation may be as elaborate as you like. Let your imagination be your guide! Tips: Dip fresh fruit in acrylic wax (kitchen floor wax) for longer life, and please do not add a bow.

Your della Robbia creation may also be used as a centerpiece or over-mantle decoration. Or you may prefer mantle and table top decorations with fresh materials that lean toward simple understated elegance with just a few magnolia leaves, boxwood, and sprigs of holly. I had fun one season hanging fresh bright red peppers on a miniature live spruce tree as a centerpiece, and I regularly assemble little trees of fresh boxwood cuttings on a pyramid shaped metal form designed to hold apples, lemons, or other fruit. Sometimes I drape them with cranberry garlands or add sprigs of holly. Simple, easy, and quick—and always tasteful. Fresh natural materials never go out of style.

Look for Inspiration
For inspiration and ideas for natural Christmas decorations, you’ll find lovely fresh plant material and décor all round Lynchburg this holiday season—at the Farm Basket, local nurseries, Old City Cemetery, churches, and more.

A particularly interesting spot to visit for historic Christmas decorating is Point of Honor (www.pointofhonor.org) in historic Daniel’s Hill, completed in 1815 by Dr. George Cabell. This Federal style mansion is now a city museum where period arrangements grace the mantle, tables, and even the stairs every Christmas. Christmas Open House is Sunday, December 3rd, from noon until 4 p.m. This holiday season, as last year, features live greens and other plant material in arrangements and a decorated tree in the Victorian style, following two prior years of arrangements in the 1815-1830 pre-Christmas tree Federal style.

To venture not far from Lynchburg for natural and creative Christmas decor, visit Avenel (www.historicavenel.com) in Bedford. Also known as the William M. Burwell House, built about 1836, Avenel is a blend of Federal and Greek Revival styling. It is known for glorious fresh Christmas arrangements and is the place to see the della Robbia tradition in practice. A great opportunity to visit would be for their 1850’s celebration, “Gilded Christmas of Olde,” on Saturday, December 9th from 6 until 8:30 p.m., when Avenel will also feature spirits and culinary delights from the past as well as lively entertainment. Tickets may be purchased from any board member, www.lynchburgtickets.com, Arthur’s Jewelry, Scott & Bond Insurance, or Bedford Welcome Center.

Deck the Halls!
I feel that childhood delight rush back as I trim my tree once again this Christmas, spread fresh greens on my mantle, and deck the halls with holly. Whether your Christmas décor is sacred or secular, reflective of worldly attachment or spiritual reverence—or a combination of these like my tree and me, it’s a very personal reflection of you and your traditions.

If you’ve never tried to create a fresh della Robbia wreath, I hope you’ll start a new tradition of your own this year and see how imaginative you can be. I can’t wait to see photos! Email me at susantimmons@verizon.net.