Bill Ryan and Jim Boyle weren’t exactly searching for their dream home when they came upon Stoney Lodge in the early spring of 1989. They were, in fact, waking from a nightmare. Still numb from the loss of their Saluda residence, which had burned to the ground on a cold January day, they surveyed the neglected gardens of their new home with weary eyes. Overgrown with broomstraw and weeds, the property seemed a wilderness. How could they have envisioned that, decades later, the Smithsonian Institution would recognize it as an exemplary American garden or that it would become a labor of love—a phoenix rising from the ashes?
Simply renovating the house was a daunting project in itself. Built in 1905 as a mountain retreat for William B. Gordon, an Episcopal minister, the home was routinely shuttered and abandoned during the winter months. “We were the first ones to live in the house year ‘round,” Bill points out. “The story goes that the father of the owner would arrive in May with three servants and two Rolls Royces and everyone would leave by November.”
This schedule was reflected in the landscape. There was not a single bulb in the garden when Bill and Jim moved in. “It was strictly a summer residence,” Bill notes, “So by the time the family came up in May, the daffodils were already long gone.”
Indeed, the grounds seemed to be a marginal concern until Mary Stoney Fisher purchased the lodge in 1923. Along with her daughter Jane Fisher Dana, Mrs. Fisher laid the foundation for the gardens: installing walls, defining beds and planting dozens of native rhododendron.
When Bill and Jim took over the property, there was little evidence of Mrs. Fisher’s efforts. “The front garden looked like a long gentle slope,” explains Bill, “but it was actually terraced. You’d walk along and suddenly there would be a three-foot drop, hidden under piles of leaves. But even after a long period of being ignored, once we cleaned out the stonewalls that were literally invisible because of overgrowth, things just started to come back. She used a lot of wild flowers,” he observes. “The blue star, especially, showed up all over in the springtime: really pretty little star-shaped flowers. Old mountain laurel stumps sent up shoots.”
The new homeowners approached their task systematically. The extensive stonework gave Bill and Jim the framework for their efforts and inspired imitation. “The hallmark of the local stone mason who constructed the walls was a single, large white quartz incorporated into the design,” Bill says. “When we did reconstruction, we had another quartz installed in homage.” There was also an elaborate stone drainage system that addressed the slope of the land, funneling runoff down to the street.
To create additional beds, stones were salvaged from a toppled rock barbeque pit, and steps that were reclaimed from the ruins of their former home were installed at the front of the house to provide easy access to the gardens below.
The botanical “bones” of the garden were mainly junipers and hollies. “This area was known as ‘Holly Hill’ for years because of the native hollies,” Bill says, “and you can still see a number of them. Native mountain laurel was here when we came as well.”
Anchoring the front lawn is a massive ancient hemlock. “We have a pen-and-ink sketch from 1923, when Mrs. Fisher got the house, and it was huge then. It’s got to be 150 years old. We’ve been fighting desperately to save it from the woolly adelgid,” Bill sighs. “It would just kill me if those awful little bugs got the tree.
“We brought the beds back first,” Bill says. “The line is pretty much as it was, although I’ve added some additional azaleas to get spring color.” Much of the plant material that was transplanted into the revitalized garden came from Bill and Jim’s former residence, which seemed to suit Mrs. Fisher’s original gardening style. “I think Mrs. Fisher and her daughter brought things up from Columbia, because we have azaleas that are of the more southern varieties,” Bill notes.
The multihued azaleas provide a dazzling display in spring, blooming in sequence around the parameter of the yard. The front garden has a meandering, informal arrangement; the terraces provide many layers of foliage when viewed from the front porch. “The garden melds into the forest,” Bill points out. “In the summertime, especially, it’s like being isolated.”
In an area near the house, a spot once delegated as the vegetable garden, Bill has created a more defined garden with a central planter, framed by boxwoods for winter greenery. “I went to school in Williamsburg, so I needed to have something a bit formal,” he explains.
Ryan has applied a painterly eye to the plantings. A watercolor artist who focuses on landscapes and botanicals, he often chooses a bloom as inspiration and brings it to his studio: converted servants’ quarters adjacent to the cutting gardens. Through the studio windows, which overlook the flowerbeds, he and his painting students from the Tryon Fine Arts Center can take in the abundance. Here color reigns: purple pineapple lily, bronze fennel, rubekia, blue sage and asters.
A particular favorite is the tubular red honeysuckle, which drapes over the arbor and shelters his orchids. “I think you have to have red in the garden…and I think Monet would back me up on that,” Bill points out. “He always had a touch of red—he loved his poppies. He claimed, and I believe it’s true, that red—at least certain shades—glows in a garden and sets off everything else, especially blue.”
Yet as lovely as the juxtapositions are, the development of the garden was a rather organic process. “I’d like to say I thought about it more, but things just sort of evolved. There are places where I try to control the color, but it’s no disaster if something slips in. That’s kind of the way Mrs. Fisher did it; if it will grow there, it will look good.”
Whatever the strategy, the restoration of Mrs. Fisher’s gardens captured the attention of the local gardening community. The French Broad River Garden Club nominated the property for inclusion in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution, and Stoney Lodge was accepted in 2004.
But the gardens received a more personal seal of approval when Mrs. Fisher’s niece came to visit a few years back. “She came in, we walked her around the house and through the garden,” Bill recalls. “When she left, she said ‘I think my aunt would have been pleased.’ That was one of the nicest things that anybody has ever said to me. It meant more than the Smithsonian recognition.”
Bill smiles at the thought of the lady who once worked this soil. “I was working down on the street at the end of the driveway a few years ago, and I hit this one big rock. I pried it up, finally, and there was “Mrs. T.H. Fisher” chipped into the stone. She definitely left her mark—as much as the mason who left his white quartz. She’s here.”