Love in the Garden

People stop in front of Damaris and Ricki Pierce’s home on Wambolt Avenue in West Asheville all the time. They look at the rock-and-brick archway emblazoned Wamboldtopia, the fairies and skeletons pressed into the rockwork, and want to know more about the fanciful world of greenery and flowers that they can only glimpse from the road.

When Damaris found the home in 1999, the property was overgrown with vines, poison ivy and a tangle of weeds. She, however, saw two magnificent oak trees, a slope that could be terraced and loads of potential. “I totally fell in love with it before I even got out of the car,” she says, and purchased the home.

Damaris set to work, transforming the unruly hillside and building a geometric herb garden. In 2002, she decided on a water feature that required some help and a lot of rock. On a tip from a friend, she hired Ricki, a stonemason. Ricki cut a pathway up the hill, zig-zagging as he went, creating spaces beneath the trees that Damaris filled with plants. In went peonies, bee balm and a patch of poppies. Ricki planted 50 ferns he rescued from a job site, tucking them in along the growing network of mulch-lined paths. Within a year of working and living together they were married, on the bricked-lined wedding circle they rushed to complete in time.

To create the flow of water his wife dreamed of, Ricki dug a lower pond, now full of iridescent gold fish, beside the screen porch. Damaris points out a big bullfrog by the pond as an indication of the garden’s success. The Pierces connected the two ponds with a shallow, rock-lined waterway that now sparkles with glistening moss. Sometimes Damaris will hear a commotion in the trees and look out to see hundreds of cedar waxwings in the oak trees, vying for a space to bathe in the shallows.

Damaris points to a bunch of blooming pitcher plants beside the goldfish pond. “They look like UFOs. Aren’t they crazy?” she says. A corkscrew willow tree, looking like a head of madly teased hair, throws its tangle of branches toward the water. The reflection of irises, forsythia and fire bush ripples in the wake of the bullfrog’s plunge.Nearby are “fairy towers” that Damaris, a multi-media artist, built among the English ivy and herbs. She transformed an ugly chain link fence into a row of elfin structures that delight children and other visitors. The center tower has a bell that their neighbor rings when she has extra eggs from her chickens.

Into each tower Damaris pressed a ceramic door of her design. Like the arched entrance to their home, doors represent opportunities to let go of the past and move into the present, as they have done. “We’re still a loving couple, even though we’re no longer together in marriage,” Ricki says, a pleasant evening starting to settle in. “We created this together. And we’re not done yet.”

Visit www.wamboldtopia.com for information on free public tours of the garden.