In the early 1900s, Henry Worrell Sloan was the toast of Highlands, North Carolina. A transplanted New Orleans cotton broker, this town benefactor and bon vivant would throw lavish parties at his hilltop estate, where guests could wander the extensive formal gardens and enjoy spectacular mountain vistas. “Cheeononda” — as the garden was named — featured dozens of terraces, dry stack granite walls and flagstone stairways, stone benches, statuary and a plethora of specimen plantings.
Fast-forward one hundred years. With Mr. Sloan’s passing, the estate fell into benign neglect and was eventually divided. In the 1970s, the stables at the lower end of the property were converted into a residence and the acres of glorious gardens between it and the main house were enveloped by rampant wild growth.
And so it was when a pair of Atlanta attorneys purchased the “barn” as their mountain getaway. As fate would have it, they had the opportunity to acquire the overgrown acreage between their property and the main house. They did, and the adventure began.
“We knew there was tremendous potential there, but we also knew we didn’t have the ability to design or conceive it…that’s not our background,” notes the lady of the house. They called upon landscape architect Jeremy Smearman and his team at Planters Garden, who had re-envisioned and installed the landscaping at the historic Old Edwards Inn, to assist them in reclaiming the property.
“It was an archeological expedition,” recalls Smearman. “There was more to take in than you could do in just an hour walkabout with a client, so we revisited the property several times. We came back to them with a narrative — a series of observations. We needed to do cleanup…we needed to restack the walls that had failed…we needed to create a circular traffic pattern that made sense in relation to their residence, rather than the main house. We wanted to develop a plan by which the owners could enjoy the property and we could modernize it in the sense that it would be functional, but not disturb it in a way that would alter the character. Then we talked about where we saw the property going and, in conjunction with that, the client’s need for a guesthouse.”
The guesthouse would be an ancillary structure that would have the look of the period and blend into its surroundings…a “gardener’s cottage.” “They wanted to make sure that it would be of a style and material that wouldn’t conflict with the existing landscape,” says Smearman. “ It needed to feel organic.”
The Atlanta architecture firm of T. S. Adams designed the compact — yet highly functional and self-contained — edifice to complement its surroundings. Set in the former horse pasture and geared to a European sensibility, the structure is solid and spare, yet intimate and enveloping. “I think the scale of the cottage is right…a very human scale…nothing grand,” Smearman notes.
Morgan-Keefe Builders were engaged to construct the cottage. “The architect and builder encouraged us not to make it to big, which seems kind of counter-intuitive,” the gentleman of the house observes. “They told us, ‘it needs to be snug…the ceilings shouldn’t be too high. You want guests to feel embraced by the space’. And they were right. What we tried to do was create something that looks like it could have been here forever, and, if it had been built 100 years ago, it wouldn’t have had 12-foot ceilings.”
Landscape architect Jeremy Smearman has redesigned the traffic patterns of the gardens to be more circular and functional in relation to the owners’ residence rather than the former Sloan mansion. Grass pathways beckon the visitor to explore the many outdoor “rooms” of the extensive grounds, which include the final resting place of Mr. Sloan himself.
Master mason Ed Webb of Pyramid Stone repaired and rebuilt the series of granite stairways that once led visitors from the Sloan mansion through the gardens and down to the stables. RIGHT: Once cleared of decades of overgrowth, the gardens revealed a treasure trove of specimen trees, planted by Henry Sloan in the early 1900s. Among them is a pair of towering ginkgos that had been completely hidden in a stand of feral white pine and what are believed to be the largest copper beeches east of the Mississippi.
To accomplish this sense of antiquity, material choices were of utmost importance. For the exteriors, the builders attempted to replicate the quality and character of the stonework that the landscapers were in the process of restoring and rebuilding. Master mason Ed Webb of Pyramid Stone worked with a mix of granites sourced from Elberton, GA and Glenville, NC. “The rough cut granite was laid in a rustic mortar joint,” says Malcolm Morgan of Morgan-Keefe. “It’s not a manicured or sculptured approach, but it was chosen to mimic the roughness of the existing walls.” A graduated slate roof — installed by Craig Perfect of Alcon Roofing and dressed with copper gutters and accents — completes the Old World feel.
Simple, painted tongue-in-groove paneling swathes the interiors, which are appointed with clean-lined, yet comfortable, Arts & Crafts style Stickley and Thomas Moser furnishings. Rather than outfitting the space with ubiquitous can lights, refurbished gaslights fitted with incandescent bulbs — fashioned by Eloise Pickard of Blairsville, GA — were installed throughout the house, imparting a gentle, nostalgic tone.
Accessories are kept to a minimum; the surrounding gardens, viewed through the windows and French doors, provide sufficient embellishment. The cottage’s integration with the landscape provides ample inspiration for adults to indulge in reverie and relaxation, while a cozy loft space — accessed by a pullout ladder in the hallway — offers young visitors an enchanting hideaway in which to indulge their imaginations.
Meanwhile, the gardens continue to provide their own sense of fantasy and to offer new discoveries: a melodious stream impounded with a series of cascading waterfalls that culminates in a trout pond, moss covered benches and even the final resting place of Mr. Sloan himself — flanked by his two wives — in a secluded section of the property. “Many projects we’ve worked on have only a limited potential,” Smearman observes. “This is a giant puzzle to be solved, with lots of interesting raw pieces that we have to figure how to fit together…and to fill in the things that Mr. Sloan didn’t have a chance to get to. It’s still a work in progress.”
As for the homeowners, they are considering ways to better integrate “the barn” into the gardens, continuing in their good stewardship of the land. “We’ve learned the difference between conservation and restoration. We feel privileged to own this property and to bring it forward in a way that honors Mr. Sloan’s vision,” says the lady of the house. “For us and, I believe, for all of the people working on the project, this is a love letter to the past.”