The tour, held April 27 and 28, showcases five private gardens as well as the North Carolina Botanical Garden
By James Dupree | Photography by John Michael Simpson
“Tucked Away Treasures” is the theme for this year’s Chapel Hill Garden Club’s biennial garden tour. The 14th annual Chapel Hill Garden Tour, held April 27 and 28, will showcase five private gardens and the North Carolina Botanical Garden. “We anticipate more than 1,500 visitors,” says Catherine Schwab, co-chair of the 2024 garden tour. “We have supported the Botanical Garden with more than $250,000 over the years. [This year], proceeds [from ticket sales] dedicated to the Botanical Garden will be focused on the Children’s Wonder Garden.” From a neighborhood just around the corner from East Chapel Hill High School to a quiet street south of UNC’s campus, here’s a sneak peek preview of four of the private gardens visitors can look forward to seeing this spring.
From the Ground Up
Rich Yost and Stephanie Yost had a vision for their property from day one. Their three-story modern home was the second house built in the Chandler’s Green neighborhood in 1988. The 0.75-acre property was originally a flat plot sloped toward the road, but over the last 35 years, Rich has used his background in engineering to transform the land into a well-manicured garden filled with memories.
“I had the builders save all the excess rocks and dirt,” Rich says. Over time, he has shaped the land into a tiered garden separated by stone walls he built by hand. “This is my escape. I can just see how it all fits together,” he says. Rich also constructed the 15-20 foot long wooden arched bridge that leads from the street to the front garden filled with perennial shrubs and smaller trees. On the north side of the garden, Eastern/European snowball viburnums display their puffy white blooms, while pink ‘Knock Out’ roses and coneflower line the beds near the street.
At the bottom of the steps, before reaching the front door, a red Sicilian fig tree wakes from winter dormancy, a reminder to Stephanie of her family’s Sicilian heritage. “My mother is Sicilian and lives in New Jersey, and her neighbor was Sicilian, too,” Stephanie says. “He picked [the fig tree] up out of the soil, roots and all, and said, ‘Take this with you and plant it.’ So I did. I get figs the size of my hands. It’s amazing.” In the tier below is a Honeycrisp apple tree and Mutsu apple tree, a gift from one of Stephanie’s colleagues at St. Thomas More Catholic School.
The garden has become a home for the birds, with birdhouses and feeders populating the garden. Whenever Stephanie and Rich visit family in southern New Jersey, they bring home another birdhouse or feeder made by an Amish community outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
On the south end of the garden, leading toward the back porch and hot tub, are a set of thick granite steps. Rich created the steps using leftover stone from the original St. Thomas More Parish on Gimghoul Road. Stephanie adds, “My son was baptized in the church. My two girls made their first communion and confirmation there. I’m also a registered nurse [at] St. Thomas More. So this is kind of my sentimental place.”
Around the southwestern side of the home, through a narrow passageway lined with a Confederate jasmine vine that is flush with white blooms from midspring to early summer, is a wine patio inspired by the couple’s trip to the Cline Family Cellars in Sonoma, California. “They had a tasting area that was dug out of the side of a hill,” Rich says. “So I got truckloads of topsoil and created my own hill and mimicked that.” Shade from the dense vegetation of evergreen trees and shrubs keeps the area cool, while the container garden provides privacy and a beautiful backdrop for their regular spring get-togethers with their son, two daughters, their spouses and five grandchildren. “It’s great,” Stephanie says. “We sit out here a lot and have parties, and no one can hear us.”
Tranquility Amid the Traffic
In between the hustle and bustle of Fordham Boulevard and UNC Hospitals, Maggie Conger and Richard Conger have turned their half-acre property nestled in the wooded Whitehead Circle neighborhood into a peaceful shaded garden.
While this is the couple’s first time on the garden tour, Maggie’s no novice. “My parents were avid gardeners, so I grew up around it,” she says. “Believe it or not, I love weeding. I tend to get lost in it, and I don’t think much about anything else. Richard helps with any cleanup work, too.”
Since moving to their Chapel Hill property in 2015 from Miami, Maggie, a retired hospice nurse, and Richard, a retired trust officer, have redone much of the landscaping. Their biggest redesign was modifying the original single driveway that came up the side of the property so it’s now a circular gravel driveway with a resodded front yard. Along the eastern side of the home where the sun is the most prevalent is Maggie’s small herb garden where oregano, sage, chives, curly parsley and common thyme flourish. At the back of the bed is a rhododendron with purple-pink blooms along with several cast-iron plants. Across a narrow gravel walkway is a pink salvia blooming behind a circular stone art piece created by stonemason Bob Simchock of Simchock Stone.
The back side of the property stays mostly shaded and is populated with ferns, camellias, purple bearded irises and junipers. When she can, Maggie buys her plants locally from retailers like Southern States, Fifth Season Gardening and Get Rooted Nursery. On the western side of the home, behind the stone patio and seating area where the couple throws parties once a month for friends and family, a Japanese maple’s red leaves stand out among the heavy green of its plant neighbors and the house’s beige brick.
As any gardener in Orange County may know, one of the biggest challenges to keeping their plants alive and beautiful is the high population of deer and rabbits. “The plants they don’t bother one year, they bother the next,” Maggie says. Not wanting to put up fencing, she has learned to coexist with the wildlife and enjoy whatever vegetation they decide not to eat.
Learning and Growing
Stephen Carnahan and Cheryl Carnahan in their no-mow garden that features unusual trees such as dwarf gingko and a dwarf bald cypress, as well as eye-catching flowers like dianthus.
Cheryl Carnahan and Stephen Carnahan moved from Columbia, Maryland, to a home in Chapel Hill near McDougle Elementary School in November 2005. Then in 2017, the couple moved again to a wooded neighborhood south of UNC’s campus where they built a “stay-in-place” home. After a 32-year career in education, Cheryl retired from her role as principal of Northside Elementary School in 2015 and now volunteers two days a week at the Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill and the SECU Family House at UNC Hospitals. Stephen, having taught high school students with disabilities and coached cross-country and wrestling for 30 years in Maryland, now devotes his time to pickleball and tending to his garden.
The front garden hosts many native and nonnative perennials. Upkeep of the property is easier as each expansive planting bed is covered in pine straw mulch and lined with stone walls Stephen built along with Joe Baughman of StoneScaping. “I love more than anything that I don’t have grass,” Stephen says. “I don’t even own a lawn mower.” Pollinator magnets like Joe-Pye weed, common milkweed and blue lobelia work as a nice green ground cover for the front beds with beautiful blooms in the spring and summer. Small trees, such as the dwarf variety of ginkgo tree, dwarf bald cypress and an American fringe tree were planted to add beauty without obscuring too much of the house.
Throughout the couple’s garden a low intermittent buzzing can be heard from multiple solar-powered sonic emitters. “I have an incredible problem with voles,” Stephen explains. “There’s an army of them here, and they eat all the roots of the plants.” The sonic emitters detect movement, using sound to drive the voles away from the property. “I’ve also put up an owl house in the back because [Eastern] screech-owls will eat one thousand voles a season,” he says. “I haven’t had a taker yet.”
The front and back gardens are decorated with a variety of artistic pieces, some of which Stephen built himself, including a bottle tree, a fairy garden to entertain his four grandchildren and a torii gate and a bamboo handrail inspired by one of his trips to Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham. One of Cheryl’s favorite pieces is the metal bee and honeycomb sculpture that sits outside the window to her reading room. Stephen bought the piece as a Christmas present for her from a Hillsborough artist during one of the NCBG’s annual Sculpture in the Garden events.
For Cheryl and Stephen, the garden will continue to be a playground to add new art pieces and plant species and enhance their ecosystem for the birds. “It’s funny, I know so little about gardening,” Stephen says, “but I do it because I enjoy it.”
In Tune With Nature
Another must-see on the tour, Katie Loovis’ oasis is a reminder of the benefits of forest gardening
By Sydney Ross
As a UNC grad, Katie Loovis has always felt a deep love for Chapel Hill. After 15 years in Washington, D.C., she was compelled to reunite with the community pulling on her heartstrings. “It’s just a beautiful and wonderful climate to be in,” Katie says.
She began her forest garden shortly after moving to Chapel Hill in 2016. Growing up in Baltimore, Katie had admired her father’s work in their garden and always helped when possible. So she was more than ready to apply her skills in her new home, maintaining 4 acres near University Lake.
Katie finds inspiration from the environment and takes pleasure in observing nature and implementing methods to improve her garden. “There’s so much joy [in] spending time outside and connecting with the plant kingdom,” Katie says. Particularly, she’s fond of swinging from the tree swings that line the creek. “It can really make you feel like a kid again as you sit and listen to the sounds of the water going by and the birds chirping,” Katie says. “It can be very peaceful and relaxing.”
In addition to the swings, the garden also features several outdoor living room spaces where people can soak in all the sights and sounds. There are hundreds of flowering hellebores and shrubs, and the fragrance of magnolias and calycanthus fills the air. The sounds of birds chirping, owls hooting and other wildlife are commonplace.
Beyond the tour, Katie looks forward to introducing people to a different form of gardening and hopes they leave feeling inspired by nature. Her property is also the primary location for future programming of the Chapel Hill Retreat Center, which she established in 2022. Katie, a doctorate of education candidate who has a graduate-level certificate in teaching from NC State and also a certification in therapeutic horticulture from NC State and the NCBG, has created a personal development curriculum that is based on principles of permaculture and “shinrin-yoku.”
Shinrin-yoku, also known as Japanese forest bathing, is a mindfulness practice of making contact with and taking in the atmosphere of the forest.
She says she’ll facilitate individual and small-group retreat experiences on the property starting this year. “I am so passionate about forest gardening; it’s like a decompression zone,” Katie says. “I hope people will feel a sense of peace and harmony with nature.”
