Building a Fairy Home

When designing a landscape it’s always good to stop and think about some options to make your garden unique.

We built a series of dry stacked stone retaining walls for our client in Asheville recently. In the landscape design process we decided to add a really cool feature into the walls. A little fairy grotto was the idea. Our clients came up with the idea originally. I have seen similar ideas in other walls, but have yet had the opportunity to install one. We thought it was a great idea, for a small statue or maybe a spot for a candle to brighten the feature at night.

So we made a space for the little fairy nooks (3 of them in the finished wall) and began building.  We installed some small stone arches that were dry laid into the wall, using only friction to hold them together and some wood support that we removed after we were done.

The stone arch is an ancient technique that I have yet to master.

The history of the arch dates back to ancient Italy where the Etruscan people built unimaginable stone arches as gates to the city. The Romans learned from them and perfected the craft.

To bring a little bit of this ancient art into our modern landscape design brings me great joy.

I love dreaming of new and old techniques to install into the features we create for our clients.

We will move forward, building and learning. Mastering techniques as the Romans did from the Etruscans.

Maybe one day in the future our children will pass on some pass on some skill to another generation to come, that will create a legacy of artistic craftsmanship for future builders.