Category: Feature

Surprises await inside a timeless exterior

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

If ever a house made beautiful music that house must be Stone Oaks Farm:

— The lilting remnants of an Irish brogue, from flame-haired Mary Dunlop, who chose crystal chandeliers for her kitchen.

— The Canadian inflection of crack golfer, hockey fan and guitarist Craig Dunlop.

— A duet of aboriginal art collectors.

— The echoes of grandchildren on summer vacation.

— The patriotic anthems of Craig and Mary’s mother countries.

— The purr of a foundling kitten who transitioned from barn to master bedroom.

— Everywhere, any time, music of many sorts from an indoor-outdoor sound system. Right now, country tunes top the playlist. “They make me feel like dancing,” Mary says. So Mary and Craig hopped over to Nashville — and danced.

— Should the house itself find a voice, only a bold, booming baritone would permeate 6,000 square feet on six acres, with terrace, pasture and barn. Because only bold folks would purchase a modest cottage and attach a 4,000-square-foot, three-story addition walled with 350,000 pounds of Tennessee fieldstone laid by a family of masons from Troy. That endeavor alone, crowned by a Celtic knot, took a year. The result deserves a  historic places marker. As for time and expense, Craig has no regrets. “There’s nothing as timeless and classic as stone.”

The Dunlop’s ballad rings familiar.

“We’ve been coming to Pinehurst for years,” Mary begins. Both are serious golfers. They kept a small house, sufficient for getaways. Then, out for a drive one fine day in 2004 they came upon the cottage, built in 1929, tucked behind massive pin oaks on Midland Road. They bought it immediately with the intention of creating a family homestead that looked the part. Never mind they were living in Milan, with an apartment in Paris. Previous addresses have included Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton. After cruel Alberta winters, Pinehurst was paradise.

“Until now, I’ve never lived in one place for more than six years,” Mary says.

Another two years passed before they occupied Stone Oaks. By then, a cottage of unknown provenance had become the core from which a new residence radiated.

First-timers on a walkthrough had better leave a trail of breadcrumbs or arm their GPS. The floor plan is complicated.

Mary starts in the kitchen, accessed by a long outdoor gallery (don’t trip over the rocking chairs) leading to the three-car garage over which hang American, Canadian and Irish flags beneath a Celtic knot. According to a commemorative pillow, the couple became American citizens on Oct. 28, 2016. “I love kitchens but I hate to cook,” says Mary. She pored over magazines until finding the right design: two islands, one granite-topped for the sink and breakfast bar, the other with a chopping surface of polished African Iroko wood.  Above the range, a backsplash of Irish Connemara marble. Dark beams match the cabinets, some stained black. A double-wide stainless fridge, a desk and combination pantry-coat closet, bar and butler’s pantry, two dishwashers and numerous ovens facilitate entertaining.

Mary couldn’t decide on lighting fixtures until the crystal chandeliers caught her eye at Pottery Barn. She likes “quirky,” best illustrated by original wooden street signs from Pinehurst, which she found at the dump. Now, they border the ceiling in kitchen and sunroom.

“This was the living room,” Mary says of her dining room long enough to accommodate a 12-foot table of stained wood planks on a central support, “so nobody gets their legs tangled up underneath.” On the walls, Canadian paintings of startling form and color; some appear lifted from Stravinsky’s The Firebird ballet, others from an anthropology textbook. Across from the dining room what had been a tiny bedroom now serves as a petite parlor with white damask-upholstered pieces, pale avocado walls and rug plus a second quirk: artsy photos of cigar smokers’ heads, old and wizened. “We saw them in a Paris restaurant . . . the owner told us where to find (the photographer),” Mary recalls. On the mantel facing the smokers stands a delicate antique clock belonging to Mary’s mother — or a French king.

Photographs, hundreds, hang everywhere. Besides chronicling family history on all four walls of a powder room, they commemorate athletic and professional achievements. One corner is devoted to musicians — Elvis, The Beatles and, as a joke, Justin Bieber. The sunroom features a Tiger Woods retrospective and more hockey.

If the parlor looks seldom-used, not so Mary’s “place,” a clubby den with wood paneling, bookshelves, oversized leather chairs, fishing trophies and assorted golf memorabilia. Yes, that’s Craig with Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, also Canadian parliamentarians and golf notables. Mary feels comfortable here, especially when Craig is away:  “I walk in, put my feet up, turn on the fire, pour a glass of wine . . .” and relax.

Upstairs dormer guest bedrooms on the cottage side are a nice size, decorated traditionally. Cross over into the addition and everything gets bigger. Much bigger. The Big Room (usually described as “great” or “family”) with more built-in bookcases, a three-story vaulted ceiling with skylights, exposed rafters and beams, a circular candle fixture suspended from the apex, stone fireplace with raised hearth, maroon brocade on sofas and chairs set a Tudor tone contradicted only by an enormous folk-art painting leaning on the mantel.  Side walls are entirely paned windows and doors, providing light to offset the dark woods. On either side stand dining room tables, one from Mary’s family, the other from Craig’s.

“We like stairs,” is Mary’s explanation for the open staircase with balcony over the Big Room, leading to the master suite: a bed-sitting room with fireplace, a quirky three-legged coffee table made from a tree trunk cross section, an unusual tiled shower room (no messy glass enclosures). Finally, Craig’s man cave extraordaire, with fitness equipment, steam and sauna, guitar display, office nook and bear skin with head, taken down by Craig himself, in Ontario.

Mary’s confluence of décor styles is her own, unassisted by professionals. Furnishings in storage during their European sojourn have traveled from High Point to Canada and now back to Southern Pines. Enhancing these are two stunning family heirloom sideboards, various tables and an antique rocking chair belonging to Mary’s mother, reupholstered in a leopard print — delightfully quirky.

“We live outside in the summer,” Mary says, when their two daughters and four grandchildren arrive for six weeks. The terrace garden with pathways, raised beds and fire pit once hosted a Rooster’s Wife-style concert. This postcard needs horses leaning over the paddock fence. For a while, the Dunlops boarded a few but no more. Instead, Mary has installed a vegetable garden that supplies the kitchen when she — or someone else — cooks. “I’ve forgotten how,” she says.

Stone Oaks is a home not only of voices but layers representing well-traveled lives. Along with eclectic art and furnishings Mary is not above levity, as in a ceramic figurine on the hall table, titled “Happily Dying of Chocolate.” The wood in the sunroom may have been rescued from a local barn but posters along the porch tease “Asylum for the Insane, Evaluation Center.” Giant glass and papier mâché pears adorn side tables in the Great Room. Mary boldly hangs Picasso’s familiar Girl Before a Mirror over a king-sized sleigh bed.

Even the land speaks for itself. Longleaf pines are absent, replaced by mature banks of rhododendron. The gnarled trunk of an ancient pin oak dominating the circular driveway resembles an elephant hide. Ivy entwines other trees. “What I wanted was a comfortable, friendly, warm home, nothing antiseptic or pretentious,” Craig maintains. He likes that every room can be a separate living space, with its own personality. “I needed a home able to absorb my junk. Walls covered with things and pictures add comfort.”

Mary concurs: “I didn’t want perfection, just a place where if you spill some wine, it’s OK.”

Not to worry — there’s plenty more in the 600-bottle temperature-controlled wine cabinet. There’s probably a song for that, too, although more likely Frank Sinatra than Garth Brooks.  PS

The many lives of Campbell House

By Ray Owen

Surviving through myriad incarnations, Southern Pines’ Campbell House is one of the region’s most significant landmarks, owing its existence to the Boyd family. Once part of their Weymouth estate, for more than 100 years it has been a center of culture, informing, influencing and enhancing civic life.

It is an outstanding example of a Country Place-era estate created over time by a remarkable series of individuals who began settling in the region around the turn of the 20th century. The fledgling Sandhills resorts were rising from the dusty remains of a former turpentine and lumber industry outpost. The backdrop for this transformation was the greater social movement of the day, a reaction to the cultural upheavals brought about by industrialization and urbanization. The Sandhills fit perfectly within the country life paradigm, appealing to America’s growing fascination with vernacular culture and native folk.

The lives of Campbell House comprise four significant periods: first the home of James Maclin Brodnax, then expanded into the original James Boyd House with additions from local Colonial houses; next moved and enlarged at its present location by Jackson Boyd; later the home of General Motors heir Maj. William Durant Campbell; and now a municipal property, home to Southern Pines Recreation & Parks Department and the Arts Council of Moore County.

The first period opens with James Boyd’s 1904 purchase of a sizable portion of land on the eastern ridge above downtown Southern Pines. Within months, the matter of building a residence was altered by the death of his kinsman, James Brodnax, who had built a two-story Colonial Revival-style home for himself on the property. James Boyd, grandfather of writer James Boyd and his brother Jackson, enlarged the Brodnax House into an imposing mansion, incorporating building elements dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Brodnax-Boyd House was located 100 feet in front of present-day Weymouth Center.

In 1921, the Brodnax-Boyd House was separated into two blocks and both moved by mule teams across Connecticut Avenue, where they became the core of two new residences. One part was refitted as a residence for Jackson Boyd (Jack) and his family, and it remained their home, following major rebuilding in 1936 after a fire. Another part of the Brodnax-Boyd House is now the dwelling standing at 435 E. New Hampshire Ave.

Jack and his brother, writer James Boyd, founded the Moore County Hounds in the winter of 1914. They saw this aristocratic sport in democratic terms and felt that it should belong to the town. Proper dress or not, anyone who wished to hunt was invited to come along, so huntsmen in formal attire rode with farmers on horses more accustomed to plowing than jumping fences.

As a captain in the Marines, Jack was in charge of canine training at Camp Lejeune. Being from blueblood hunt country, he was a trainer, breeder, master of 70 foxhounds. Jack taught his war dogs to march in cadence, heel on regular intervals, and perform ordered drills. More training prepared them for track and attack missions and watch duty. His division’s canine records included letters of commendation, citations and a discharge certificate. In many instances, a formal photograph of the dog was included upon promotion of the dog to sergeant.

Jack’s eldest son, John Boyd, was killed in action at Guadalcanal, and the local VFW post is named for him. Those who knew Jack Boyd say that his son’s death was a severe blow and he left  Southern Pines shortly after the war.

In 1946, Major W.D. Campbell purchased the Jackson Boyd House and he made extensive changes, facing the unpretentious frame structure with ballast-brick from Charleston, South Carolina. The same brick was used in the formal landscaping and walled garden at the rear of the house. In 1966 the Campbell family gave their property to the town, asking that it be used for the cultural and social enrichment of the community.

Evidence of history can be found throughout the building, with a striking contrast between the formal entrance and the informality of the large pine-clad room on the east wing. This room, known today as the Brown Gallery, encompasses the most visible remains of Brodnax-Boyd House with its circa 1820s mantel and beaded hand-planed paneling.

In Jackson Boyd’s time the main staircase rose at the back of the foyer, but the Campbells reconfigured it to rise at the front, opening up the back wall with glass doors. The foyer and former dining room, now the White Gallery, remain unchanged from the late 1940s with marble-chip terrazzo flooring, marble staircase and decorative wrought-iron railing. A medallion graces the entry hall floor. Inscribed in Greek, it depicts an African antelope bagged by Maj. Campbell for the Museum of Natural History in New York.

The Campbells and their daughter, Margot, were active in many civic and community affairs. Mrs. Campbell was one of the founders of the Southern Pines Garden Club. Maj. Campbell’s interests included the Red Cross, Boy Scouts and model trains and he built the Train House to house his collection. An Eagle Scout in his boyhood, Campbell became a leader in the national and international movement, an activity that eventually called the family away from their home in the pines. Born in Flint, Michigan, Maj. Campbell was the grandson of William Crapo Durant, the co-founder of General Motors and Chevrolet, and the founder of Frigidaire. Campbell graduated from Princeton University in 1929 and initially pursued a career in banking. During World War II, he was a battery commander and retired from Fort Bragg in 1946 as a major. He became involved in Scouting as an adult at the suggestion of its British founder, Robert Baden-Powell. His travels convinced him that Scouting could do much for young people and he took a special interest in furthering the organization in developing countries with programs tailored to local needs. That philosophy and his personal commitment saw a doubling of the Scouts’ membership in the 1970s and 1980s, chiefly in the Third World. A philanthropist, Maj. Campbell was also on the executive committee of the Mystic Seaport Museum and a director of the National Audubon Society.

When the Campbells gifted the property to the town, a board of directors was appointed, bylaws were established, an on-site director was hired, and a vigorous program developed to put the property to use. The Southern Pines Information Center was installed in the main house, and the Stoneybrook Racing Association moved into its west wing office.

The Boy Scouts were among the early organizations at Campbell House, along with offices for the Humane Society of Moore County and Moore County Historical Association. In the late 1960s, a small golf museum was set up in the former dining room, and this collection was later turned over to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

In 1972, Southern Pines established a year-round recreation and parks department centered on the property. This program is now the biggest user of the site with its offices on the second floor of the main house. The first floor is the headquarters of the Arts Council of Moore County, where they maintain two galleries that display the work of different artists every month and a sales gallery that showcases the work of regional artists.

Thousands of visitors have enjoyed Campbell House, hundreds of volunteers have given time and energy to the fulfillment of its purpose, and a small, dedicated group has taken personal responsibility for its success.

Moss gathers on the ancient lawn as azaleas bloom late against fading bricks. Across the lot, live oaks keep the view — if they could speak, what stories would they tell, wide spreading boughs, nothing missed in their branches. Some say the house is haunted and at twilight the apparition of a woman drifts across the stairs, a lingering reminder of lives that have come before.  PS

Ray Owen is a local historian, who works for the Arts Council of Moore County.

Peter Hatch’s journey from Moore County to Monticello

By Jim Moriarty

Equipped with a pair of hands weather-beaten as a potato farmer and adorned with a shock of gray hair as wild as a patch of weeping love grass, Peter Hatch spent 35 years faithfully tending the garden of a man who died 140 years before he was even born. The man was Thomas Jefferson. The garden was at Monticello. And Hatch’s path to Virginia went straight through Sandhills Community College.

Hatch had a self-described “privileged upbringing” in Birmingham, Michigan, a chichi suburb of Detroit. His father, Clarance, was an ad guy, a madman, a hotshot executive at the firm Campbell Ewald who had scaled the Mount Everest of advertising accounts, General Motors, in the days when what was good for General Motors really was good for America. Peter, the offspring of his father’s second marriage, was a six-year veteran of the exclusive Cranbrook Schools. At the age of 14, he took the only golf lesson of his life at exclusive Oakland Hills Country Club from the legendary Michigan professional Al Watrous, a PGA Tour player of the ’20s and ’30s who lost the 1926 Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St. Annes to Bobby Jones on the last two holes.

Flowering dogwoods and pink azaleas led Hatch to Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina. “How I ended up at Chapel Hill was serendipitous,” he says. “It was a pretty place in the springtime.” Packing the rigorous training of Cranbrook in his duffel, Hatch found a niche at UNC. “I kind of flourished because I had a lot of skills but I didn’t have any ideas. Then I suddenly got ideas when I went to college.”

He graduated in 1971 with a degree in English, a penchant for crafting poetry with a short shelf life, and a yellow Volkswagen beetle, the import he was given as a graduation present by his mother, Janet, the second of the three wives of the consummate Detroit pitchman. The first stop was Glacier National Park in Montana, where he spent nine months painting cabins, selling sporting goods and pumping gas. Then, echoing the advice of Horace Greeley, it was off to Santa Barbara, California, to find his college sweetheart, Jane West. “I drank tawny port in the afternoon and wrote bad poetry and just kind of sat around,” says Hatch. He read the voices of the day. Robert Bly. James Wright. Galway Kinnell. James Dickey. Kenneth Rexroth. John Berryman. Before long, West sent him back east.

“My girlfriend dumped me for the fourth time, so I rode around the country to try to find a job as an English teacher,” says Hatch. He landed an interview at another private prep school, Lawrence Academy, outside Boston, that needed someone to teach English and coach hockey, a reasonable fit for the former center of the Cranbrook hockey team. On the way, he stopped in Michigan, where his mother insisted he get a haircut. “She made me go to her Lebanese hairdresser to shave off my beard and give me a haircut,” he says. Depending on your generational frame of reference, the resulting bowl cut looked like Prince Valiant, Jimmy Connors, Moe or Lloyd Christmas.

While he was waiting to learn whether or not he was destined to be the new coach of the LA Spartans, Hatch stayed with friends in East Falmouth on Cape Cod, not far from Hatchville, where his ancestors disembarked sometime in the 1620s. Destiny had its own plan. “One of them started talking about the joys of organic gardening,” he says. “When I didn’t get the job as an English teacher, I decided to go back to Chapel Hill.” He earned a few dollars delivering the News and Observer and planted a garden. Enter Sandhills Community College.

During his senior year at Chapel Hill, Hatch had been a student teacher at Pinecrest High School, where he was assigned to Rick Lewis’ senior world literature class. They would both wind up at SCC, Lewis as the eventual head of the English department and Hatch as a 1974 graduate of the landscape gardening program that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. “It seemed like the kind of thing that would be useful to me, not really knowing the difference between a peony and a pine tree,” says Hatch. “Growing up I never did any labor. I never worked. I didn’t know how to do things. You learned a lot of nuts and bolts skills. It was a really valuable thing for me. I look back on it fondly.”

At the time the program was led by Fred Huette and Bill Hunt. “It was based on the Wisley school of horticulture in England,” says Hatch. “It had these two great kind of founding fathers.” Hatch describes Huette as “an old-timey English gardener” and Hunt as “the dandy, in his suit and bow tie, he seemed like he just walked out of the lecture hall at Oxford University.” Hatch lived in what he describes as “a little bit of a hovel” in horse country off May Street in Southern Pines on $100 a month. His car broke down and he couldn’t afford to fix it. “Peter would always wear these worn-out tennis shoes, holes everywhere, including the soles,” says Lewis. “I have a picture of the two of us standing at the rear of my Volkswagen bus.”

Hatch became exhibit A for continuing education. “Something we’re sort of proud of here at Sandhills,” says SCC President Dr. John Dempsey, “is that we have as many university graduates who transferred to us as we have our graduates who transferred to university. That’s because, believe it or not, some university graduates — who may be English majors — find that they cannot make a decent living, so they come back here to learn a trade. And that’s exactly what Peter did.”

It was a trade that transported him back in time.

For three-and-a-half years following his graduation from Sandhills, Hatch worked in Winston-Salem at Old Salem recreating the authentic landscape. “I was their first horticulturalist involved in restoring these 18th century Moravian gardens. There was a woman there who was in charge of the landscape restoration committee — Flora Ann Bynum. It took her five minutes to say her name: FloraAnnLeeBynum. She was this indomitable figure, a great fighter for historically accurate gardens. She corresponded with some of the great botanical scholars in the world. It was a controversial and radical idea to begin thinking of landscape as another reflection of the character of the times, in the same way that the architecture of the buildings or the artifacts found in the culture of the society were. It was an unusual idea for people. They hadn’t been exposed to the idea that these people had utilitarian orchards and gardens and that their yards didn’t have grass in them — they were swept yards — and they had woodpiles and weeds and bee skips. It was a fun thing to get involved with and what made Salem particularly unique was they had wonderful documentary records of what the gardens were like. These Germans kept really good records. They hired me in part, I think, because I was an English major, which was amazing. They looked at it as a job involving historical research and interpretation. It was a terrific first job.”

Jefferson’s Monticello was about to embark on a similar journey, and Hatch had a unique set of credentials for the trip. The first project would be the recreation of Jefferson’s grove. In consultation with Monticello’s architectural historian, William L. Beiswanger, a Connecticut landscape architect, Rudy J. Favretti, put together the plan to revive the 18-acre grove. “I was hired specifically to finish that and also with the assumption that the next big project was to be restoring Jefferson’s vegetable garden and orchard,” says Hatch.

The Monticello that Hatch first encountered was different than the one he left behind in 2012. “It was a tourist shrine. Slavery was never mentioned. The interpretation was very kind of 1950s,” he says. “I got to see Monticello evolve over the time I was there from sort of a mom-and-pop operation to a sophisticated and professional educational and preservation organization. There was a real tradition of scholarship that emerged and became more and more intense. Scholarship drove the mission. That was an inspiring thing that sent me on my way.”

Over his 35 years as director of gardens and grounds at Monticello, Hatch was responsible for maintaining the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s 2,400 acres; was the project manager for the Thomas Jefferson Parkway; wrote four books, the most recent being A Rich Spot of Earth” — Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello; supervised a large crew of groundsmen, more than a few of whom, hailing from Virginia’s hills and hollows, were a bit rough around the edges; and lectured in 38 states on Jefferson and the history of garden plants. “Writing books about Thomas Jefferson was easy compared to the challenges of keeping alive noble 200-year-old trees, preventing the deer from eating my cabbages, and sustaining irrigation water for the gardens through a long, hot Virginia summer,” says Hatch.

There is a rich nuance in viewing one of the faces on Mount Rushmore through the prism of his passion for gardening. “I described the vegetable garden as sort of an Ellis Island of new and unusual plants that came from the four corners of the globe,” says Hatch. “Jefferson documented planting some 170 varieties of fruit, 330 varieties of vegetables and some 140 species of shade and ornamental trees, and on and on. He had this really expansive passion for plants.

“There was a bunch of stuff we had trouble growing. The Arikara bean. It came from the Arikara tribe in the northern Dakotas. Meriwether Lewis spent the winter of 1803 in North Dakota near what is now Bismarck. They were all starving. They survived by trading trinkets for Indian corn. These northern Indian tribes had this really sophisticated agriculture and horticulture in that they developed a lot of bean, corn, squash, tobacco varieties to adapt to this harsh Northern Plains climate, where it’s incredibly dry and hot in the summer but incredibly cold in the winter. Jefferson was trying out a lot of these agricultural corn and bean varieties sent back by Lewis. We often had a plot exhibiting Lewis and Clark plants.”

Failure wasn’t frowned upon, it was part of the package. “There was this great clash of history versus horticulture in the sense that people expect a tidy, manicured place, but it really wasn’t like that,” says Hatch. “Jefferson planted a lot of things that died. The fact that he was doing all this stuff meant that a lot of things didn’t work. I loved that contradiction. I loved that ambiguity about my job. It would probably drive most people crazy. Jefferson had fun gardening. He had these wonderful enthusiasms for cultivated plants. ‘The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.’ Jefferson’s quote is not just a statement about gardening, it’s a life lesson.”

Jefferson’s gardening lessons travel as comfortably through time as his words. “There are a lot of different kinds of gardens at Monticello. There’s the grove, which is really an interesting idea — that America’s ideal garden is carved out of the forest, clearing and thinning trees, opening up undergrowth and planting hardy perennial flowers in ground cover,” says Hatch. “In Southern Pines they have those great longleaf pine forests that are kind of a natural grove. There are a lot of Jefferson conceits that people can use when they make their own garden. Try new things. Do successive plantings, growing things through the wintertime, which you can do in Southern Pines really easily. Grow some of Jefferson’s favorites. He had some greatest hits of fruits, flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs. In the vegetable garden there were things like tennis ball lettuce or tree onions or pineapple melons — you can get the seeds from Monticello. You can purchase plants at Monticello that are offshoots of original trees or things that Jefferson particularly cherished, a real tangible link to the past.”

Hatch’s days are no longer filled with supervising The Dukes of Bacon Hollow or chasing down Chinaberry trees to replace the ones killed off by a winter freeze. He lives 20 miles west of Monticello, where his wife, Lucile, still works, on a gravel road that winds through an apple orchard. Their two daughters, Rosemary and Olivia, one a hydrologist, the other a neurologist, are grown and gone. Hatch has a small garden, a creek in the backyard and a wood-burning stove. He plays the occasional game of golf, carrying his clubs at courses as distinct from Oakland Hills as a Queen Anne’s lace is from a Lady Slipper orchid. He tends to a hiking trail in the Shenandoah National Park for the fun of it. “In my new life I’ve been more of a botanist,” he says. “I go out into the mountains, spend a lot of time searching for rare colonies of plants growing outside the normal range.”

A job he seems to have come to naturally. PS

Jim Moriarty is senior editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

An ode to azaleas

By Barbara J. Sullivan

Quick! Word association game. What comes to mind when you see the word “azalea”? Garden parties? Festival queens with long white gloves and tiaras? Augusta National Golf Club? The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event? Possibly not, but more about that later.

Azalea shrubs, for the most part, are evergreen, reasonably fast growing, sturdy and undemanding. What’s not to love? They can be counted on to bloom reliably year after year, providing floral skirts and crinolines for the clouds of flowering cherries and dogwoods — a tableau that never fails to dazzle for a few short weeks every spring. Azaleas are a mascot any town can count on. By and large boasting a good life expectancy, they’re going to stay where you put them like lamp posts and park benches. The open azalea blossom, with its hallmark five stamens flaring out, suggests nothing so much as fertility, new life, the future about to unfold. Not a bad subliminal message for any place that wants to appear vibrant and forward looking. For many good reasons, over a dozen towns all across the United States — from Hamilton, New Jersey to Brookings, Oregon — have hit upon the idea of luring people with azalea-themed enticements, and it works.

One of the advantages of living in the South is the broad spectrum of azaleas that are able to thrive. In the coastal regions, the size and lushness of the big, blousy indica hybrid generally makes an intense impact on garden visitors. If there’s one azalea that most people are familiar with, it would be the indica ‘Formosa’, an uber-dramatic magenta giant that tends to dominate wherever it’s planted. The other two classic indicas for the Southeast are the snowy white ‘Mrs. G.G. Gerbing’ and the unbeatable shell pink ‘George L. Taber’ with delicately variegated petals and a sprinkling of freckles hiding in the hollow of each blossom’s center. The indicas thrive in hot, humid summers, performing best in slightly acidic soil with moderate moisture. They will grow and bloom in full sun as well as full shade, a feat not many plants can claim — although the perfect spot would be dappled sunlight. In areas like the Sandhills, kurumes are a better bet. Some of the favorites tend to be ‘Coral Bells’ with their soft, pink color; the fiery ‘Hershey’s Orange’; and the pure white ‘Snow’. Encore Azaleas®, which bloom in the spring and repeat again in fall, and come in all colors from red through pink, coral, orange and red, also do well.

For reasons of stamen count and somewhat obscure botanical taxonomy, azaleas were stripped of their classification as a stand-alone genus back in the 1700s and have had to live as two sub-genera of Rhododendron ever since. To a non-botanist this may seem arbitrary and capricious because rhododendrons — those mountain-loving evergreens with broad leaves and showy clusters of lavender, pink or white blossoms — seem pretty easy to distinguish from their azalea cousins. But they both have a remarkable history in common — which takes us to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event which scientists say happened some 66 million years ago and wiped out much of the planet’s flora and fauna including, of course, the dinosaurs.

A couple of million years prior to that event, before the last ankylosaurus exhaled its final breath and at a time when Africa was drifting ever so slowly away from South America, the first green shoot of the family Ericaceae pushed its way up through the Earth’s surface and began the job of photosynthesizing and reproducing. And then, when just about everything else on Earth departed the planet for good, members of the Ericaceae family hung in there. As the planet once again became hospitable to a large variety of plants, the family grew and evolved, eventually branching out into over 100 genera. These now include modern-day heaths and heathers, blueberries, cranberries, mountain laurel, rhododendrons and azaleas (acid-loving lime-haters all). In particular, azaleas are part of a unique group of plants that use fungi called mycorrhizae, which colonize their roots and help them bring in water and nutrients in harsh and inhospitable conditions where other plants might not survive.

But how did we end up, 68 million years later, with these spectacular survivors in our backyards? The ancestors of most of our kurume, indica and other azalea hybrids originated in Japan, China or the Caucasus region, where they grew in the wild and were cultivated by gardeners for centuries before Europeans became aware of their existence. By the late 1600s, emissaries from the European continent had begun traipsing around Asia, sending home azalea specimens and seeds — and feeding the insatiable appetites of plant collectors in places like England, France and Holland. The love affair had begun, and by the 18th century it had grown into a serious trading enterprise.

Meanwhile, the American colonies were playing a major role in this transmigration of the Ericaceae family. From the Appalachians to the Southern swamps, amateur botanists like John Bartram and his sons were traveling by horseback and canoe, collecting native plant samples for their eager colleagues across the ocean. Prized among these were more than 25 species of native azaleas like the famous, fragrant, white “swamp honeysuckle” azalea (Rhododendron viscosum) and the “pinxter flower” azalea (R. periclymenoides), which were among the very first azaleas ever grown in England and became the basis for many popular hybrids.

And crisscrossing the Atlantic in the other direction, the first non-native azaleas (offspring of the original travelers from Asia) had already landed in Mobile, Alabama, by the mid-1700s and were brought to gardens in Charleston and New Orleans in the following decades. From Virginia down to Florida and all along the Gulf Coast, as it became apparent that these flowering beauties were perfectly suited to the local climates and conditions, azaleas became the backbone of the Southern garden, even venturing inland. It’s no surprise, however, that the favorites to this day remain the splashy, shameless indicas, which more than any other plant give us that hit of beauty, sensuality, abandon and luxury we welcome as we greet the rebirth of spring in our gardens.  PS

Barbara Sullivan is the author of Garden Perennials for the Coastal South and a frequent lecturer on gardening topics

Why Weymouth’s creative soul endures

By Stephen E. Smith  •   Photographs by John Gessner   •   Illustrations by Harry Blair

If words well chosen are music to the soul, the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities has been the South’s premier concert hall for almost a century.

James Boyd, who built the house on Weymouth Heights in rambling increments early in the 20th century, wrote his four novels, a book of short stories, his many poems and his voluminous correspondence there, and many of the great American writers of the last century visited the Boyds, talking writing in the great room and library and whiling away the evenings over drinks and witty banter.

For the last 40 years, Weymouth has served as a retreat for North Carolina writers who have created literary works of enduring value: Clyde Edgerton, Betty Adcock, Guy Owen, Robert Morgan, Margaret Maron, Fred Chappell, Shelby Stephenson, Wiley Cash — the list of established writers who’ve enjoyed residencies at Weymouth numbers in the hundreds.

Writers residencies and art colonies abound — Poets & Writers lists more than 300 worldwide — but few such entities boast the literary heritage of the Weymouth Center. Author/editor Jonathan Daniels claimed that the Southern Literary Renaissance began in the living room at the Boyd house, but Weymouth doesn’t need hyperbole to bolster its literary credentials. There’s no doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald held forth on the theory of the novel when he visited with the Boyds for three days in June of 1935, and Thomas Wolfe climbed through an unlocked window into the great room on a January morning in 1937, settling in for a four-day respite. Sherwood Anderson was a frequent guest who lingered for weeks, and Maxwell Perkins, the Scribner’s editor whose clients monopolized the 20th century literary canon, enjoyed visits at the Boyd house. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green was James Boyd’s best friend.

Surely Weymouth’s literary mojo works its magic on contemporary writers in search of inspiration, but the old house’s ambience is also a contributing factor: Slanting afternoon light decants through ancient wavy green glass windows, inspiring moments of pure vision, the jumbled ups and downs and switchbacks of the meandering hallway in the writers’ quarters are likely to encourage inventiveness and awaken the imagination, and each bedroom, uniquely its own universe and named for a writer who visited during the last century, conjures up words ensconced indelibly on the American psyche.

When the house is closed to the public, visiting writers are free to wander rooms, including the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, where voices eloquently resonate. For those romantic nature poets yearning for the natural world, Weymouth’s meticulously maintained grounds with their longleaf pines and springtime weeping cherries are inviting enough, and less than a mile east is the boundary of Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, donated to the state by the Boyds, with its towering pines, wildflowers, wire grass and rare species, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, pine barrens tree frog, bog spicebush, and fox squirrel. 

Best-selling author Wiley Cash, who’s stayed at Weymouth three times in recent years, communed with the ghosts: “I wrote and revised a chapter of my recent novel, The Last Ballad, at Weymouth in the fall of 2015. I was in the Maxwell Perkins room, and I joked with the other residents that Perkins was known for cutting thousands of words from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, and I was hoping his spirit in the room would help me add thousands of words to the book I was working on. He granted my wish.”

Margaret Maron, the author of 30 books, has been a regular writer in residence, accompanied by a group of fellow mystery writers: “We call ourselves the Weymouth 7,” says Maron, “because it was at Weymouth that we held our first writer’s retreat — Mary Kay Andrews, Brynn Bonner,  Diane Chamberlain, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff, and me. For one heady week, we met every morning to bounce ideas off each other, then retired to our separate solitary spots and wrote until it was time to gather for supper. We’ve scattered now, but those first annual visits helped produce at least 20 books and we shall always be grateful that Weymouth welcomed us so graciously. (Although we could have done without the ghost!).”

The Visiting Writers Program has come a long way in the last four decades since the Friends of Weymouth acquired the Boyd house from Sandhills Community College, and Sam Ragan, Buffie Ives (Adlai Stevenson’s sister), Guy Owen, Paul Green and other luminaries conceived of Weymouth as a writers’ retreat. At an organizational meeting in the dining room, Guy Owen, author of The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man, joked, “We can put the pornographic writers in the attic of the barn,” to which Ms. Ives, always proper and outspoken, immediately objected: “There will be no pornographic writers at Weymouth!” No one attempts to influence what is written at Weymouth, and it’s unlikely that any of the writers in residence have sidestepped, in the service of middle-class good taste, the truth as they find it. Thus the program has attracted a wide variety of authors from Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and I Am Charlotte Simmons) to Oprah’s Book Club author Robert Morgan (Gap Creek and Boone).

Katrina Denza, who directs the Visiting Writers program, admits that it’s a balancing act. “We try to have double the number of new writers so that every level is represented. And we’re always working to improve the program by having the writers give readings open to the public. Recently, Pat Riviere-Seel read from her memoir-in-progress at Belle Meade and Sharon Swanson showed a film she made about Elizabeth Spencer at Penick. Writers and poets have also volunteered for Weymouth’s Write-On Camp in the summer, and they’ve acted as judges for our Moore County Writers’ Competition as well as serve on the Cos Barnes Fiction Fellowship Committee.”

During a November residency, Clyde Edgerton, who wrote the conclusion to Where Trouble Sleeps at Weymouth in the late ’90s, was back at work on a new novel. He brought his banjo along and on the last Tuesday of the month, sat in with the Weymouth Song Circle, entertaining everyone with his original songs and stories.

Residencies are open to North Carolina natives, current residents, or to those with significant ties to the state. Each applicant must submit a list of publications — poems, short stories, screenplays, novels, articles or works of nonfiction — and a plan to work on a specific project during the stay. A minimum residency of one week is required.

Weymouth provides a room with a desk, bed, reading chair, blankets and pillow — nothing luxurious but more than adequate for the writer who seeks solitude. Linens, toiletries and traveling expenses are the participant’s responsibility. Wi-Fi access is limited to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame study. The writers’ area of the house has a full kitchen, three baths, a sitting room, covered veranda, and four bedrooms.

“We have a wish list of improvements for the program,” says Denza. “We are constantly looking to upgrade the writers’ experience at Weymouth. We’d like to provide meals for the writers. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the resources to do that, but there are excellent restaurants a few blocks away on Broad Street.”

The writers who stay at Weymouth aren’t there for the cuisine. They believe in words the way a scientist believes in carbon — absolutely. Words permeate the ancient plaster walls, and each new writer in residence applies a fresh layer of literary history.

“There is something extra that lives in one who stays at Weymouth,” writes former Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson, “the combo of magic and desire in being a writer in residence. I feel nostalgia for the Anderson room as I write those sentences. The joy and glow of wonder in those stories. And in that room I stayed in.”

Shortly after Fitzgerald’s 1935 visit with the Boyds, he wrote of happening upon his younger and more optimistic self: “I was with him again — for an instant I had the good fortune to share his dreams . . . And there are still times when I creep up on him . . . on a spring night in Carolina when it is so quiet that you can hear a dog barking in the next county.”

He may have been recalling his time at the Boyd house, where 80 years on writers continue to find inspiration in the fragile stillness of a Southern night. PS

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press awards.