“Naturally elegant. Kind of quirky with a touch of the whimsical.” That’s how Libby Endry describes both her style in flower design and the vibe she works to foster in her curated floral and gift shop, The Gardener’s Cottage, located in a small, historic Tudor-style building just steps from the entrance to Biltmore Estate.
Endry learned the art, she says, “just by being here” over the years, and she had loving guidance from the shop’s original owners, Asheville painter Bee Sieburg and Sieburg’s daughter Molly Courcelle, who’s also an artist. In fact, Endry, who grew up on the Gulf Coast, calls Sieburg her “Asheville mama.”
She has owned The Gardener’s Cottage since she and her sister, Laura Belsinger, took over for Sieburg and Courcelle in 2004. Endry was only 22, fresh out of college, and what she once saw as a step along the way bloomed into her career, as she cultivated Solomon’s seals, hellebores, and other unusual flowers in her garden, along with a network of countless relationships. In addition to running the Cottage, she administers wedding flowers, custom flower arrangements including daily delivery, and grouped plantings. Belsinger moved in 2007, and today Endry’s team includes shop manager Sarah Mollere and special-events planner and workshop leader Martha Collett; her mother, Susan Endry, also helps with seasonal events.
Her art, she says, is distinctively Ashevillean, based largely on what’s growing in the woods and local gardens, nurtured by the community of gardeners and other plant people, and inspired by the work of the city’s many artists and potters.
Not that she doesn’t impart her own artistic touches. Endry has become known for a palette of dappled green and silvery white, for the various pinks of her Southern camellias, and for her personal favorite flower, ice-cream colored Ranunculus. Though she emphasizes native botanicals, there’s seldom been a time when an Australian tree fern has not welcomed visitors to the shop, its fronds curving nearly as high as the ceiling. These are her calling cards.
But as the season progresses, her work is drawn from the coves and lakes of the region. It may be anchored with a piece of driftwood or even arranged to emerge from a turtle shell.
Endry points to a weathered and splintered tree stump, with bleached roots fanning beneath it. This will be the framework for a statement piece to be displayed at the Grove Park Inn. She says when she first saw the stump’s architecture, she knew some things immediately: that she’d be tucking autumn fern into a graceful curve, with moss in the other nooks. Sunflowers will spray from the top in what will eventually be a seven-foot-tall showstopper.
Endry isn’t above working with found flowers, either. “I’ve knocked on many a door if I see a gorgeous shrub of forsythia or quince, hydrangea, or peonies,” she admits. (She got this habit from her mentor, Bee Sieburg.) Endry jokes that she often drives with only one eye to the road, scanning the forested roadside for things like rhododendron, sponge mushrooms, birch branches — “just whatever inspires me.”
In early spring, boxes of live emerald-green local moss were stacked by the back door, collected by one of her regular suppliers. A stump from her parents’ home near Cashiers awaited embellishments, and she says she gets ideas for every wasp’s nest she sees. A farmer brings her blooming branches from his orchards across the region.
As grand and quirky as some of Endry’s work is, most of the compositions sold in the shop are slight and delightful, like the mossy arrangement spilling from an antique teacup from her own collection, or the single Ranunculus flower paired with a Pteris fern frond in a small clear vase that catches the light. All are casual, yet striking, as if gathered on a springtime walk in the forest.
She’s experimenting with darker colors, as well. “I’m really into some of the darker purples and blues mixed with blush, and just interesting silvery gray-greens,” she says.
Though trends may come and go, what she aims for is a certain timelessness, a carefully cultivated atmosphere that the shop’s repeat visitors call “their happy place.”
The Gardener’s Cottage, 34 All Souls Crescent, Biltmore Village. For more information, call 828-277-2020 or see thegardenerscottageasheville.com.