By Kate Reynolds
Photos By Rimas Zailskas
Terry Dickinson is a determined man. You have to be when you’re trying to create engaging photographic images of nature. An accomplished wildlife photographer, Terry had been known to sit for 13 hours in a deer stand to capture the perfect shot. So when it came to transforming his heavily wooded property into a fantasy water garden, he certainly had the right stuff. What he didn’t have was the landscaping experience.
Terry and his wife Sandy left Connecticut and the corporate life 12 years ago to open Reflections of Nature, a gallery in Asheville that would feature Terry’s photographs. Initially, they weren’t planning on undertaking a major garden renovation as well. Somewhere along the line, however, Terry began to get ideas.
The Dickinsons’ six acres in Hendersonville sit on a steep hillside, bordered by a year-round stream. Terry began to visualize a series of ponds and waterfalls that would take advantage of both the water source and the natural flow that the slope could create.
It seemed an ideal location to create a setting to embrace the couple’s love of flora and fauna. "For 25 years, I’ve been a professional wildlife photographer," he says, "so this was a way to bring it right into our yard. If you have water, you have everything — the ducks, the turtles, the frogs, the salamanders, the birds."
"I sat out here for hours and hours trying to figure out where this thing was going to go," Terry recalls. "I’d never done this before. I didn’t write it down or work it out on paper. I just tried to design it to fit into the land."
At first, Sandy was a tad mystified and incredulous about her husband’s ambitions. "This is the man that, if I asked him to hang a curtain rod, he couldn’t do it," she laughs. "When he said he was going to clear everything, I kept asking, ‘Am I still going to see trees? Am I still going to see green?’ He just kept saying ‘Don’t worry about it.’"
With a rough plan in mind, Terry set about preparing the land for the water garden by clearing a large section near the back of the house. "Our neighbor came by one time and he said, ‘What have you done to the place? You’ve taken down all the trees. You’ve ruined the property,’" Sandy recalls.
The neighbors were in for still more surprises. Working mostly alone and by hand, Terry began the process of digging out the first of the ponds, just below the master bedroom suite’s balcony. A 12-by-15-foot koi haven fed by a small waterfall, it reaches a depth of six feet in the back corner to give the 350-some resident fish a hiding spot from night herons and otters.
The koi pond was just a warm-up. In the area beneath the house’s wrap-around porch Terry began the magnum opus. Here, a small pool at the top of a stacked stone rise delivers a cascading waterfall into the sprawling pond below. In all, the main water feature runs 32 feet. It was a mammoth undertaking.
"I did a lot of the work during the winter, with a pick ax," Terry says. "I worked at night sometimes — from 11:00 to 3:00 in the morning. It was a mud hole for six months. It froze over, there was rubber everywhere." He chuckles. "I had a ball."
With the crater complete, the stone waterfall was put in place. After installing the pumps that would recycle water from the lower level, more than 20 tons of Virginia fieldstones, salvaged from old stonewalls, were secured in concrete. "Carrying those 80-pound bags of concrete was a challenge," says Terry. "All 300 of them."
The effect was worth the effort: a waterfall with a surprisingly natural appearance. "The stones have a limestone content, so you can see the wear on them where the water has been dripping over them," explains Terry. "They’re nice and smooth — some even have holes worn through them."
Preparing the lower pond also required some heavy lifting. The Dickinsons brought in a small Cat and several truckloads of dirt to create a dam, which would support the oak-piling bridge that would access a cedar gazebo. An 800-lb. EPDM pond liner was laid down over most of the indentation, the pond was filled and aquatic plants — including exotic lotuses with enormous pads nearly five feet wide — were put in place. An area at the gazebo end was left unlined to create a natural bog where cattails, water mint, parrot feather and water iris could flourish.
The ecology of the water feature was carefully planned to be self-sustaining. "These ponds are set up just like a mountain stream, so you have the algae eaters living under the rock," Terry notes. "It’s critical that they have a place to live — they’ll take care of the rest of it themselves.
"One of the most important parts is the aeration," he continues. "That’s where the waterfalls come in. They keep plenty of oxygen in the water, replacing about 1,000 gallons a day from the stream down in the woods. I have a shallow well pump, set up for 25 feet or less, on a timer to pump a few times a day. All our landscape water comes from the stream and is recycled back there. Nothing comes from our well."
The couple then set about creating a pair of bookend outdoor structures for relaxation and entertaining, surrounded by lush vegetation. The plank bridge, which leads to the gazebo, is lined with climbing hydrangea, and a seating arbor beside the stone waterfall is draped with wisteria. Integrated wood boxes on the arbor are lined with rubber, based with peat moss and filled with bog plants: trillium, Venus flytrap, sundews and plenty of moss.
Selecting plantings for the terrestrial portions of the garden became Sandy’s passion. "I wouldn’t call myself a gardener," she says, "but I’ve always loved the woods and the countryside." Plantings were chosen to feel natural in the setting: laurel, juniper, magnolia and, of course, an abundance of hostas. "We must have around 1,500," Terry points out. "But they love it here, so why fight it?"
For color around the main pond, a sweep of dianthus stretches beneath the laurels to the water’s edge. Weeping cherries grace a small peninsula. Ivy, ferns and mosses abound, surrounding the pools and punctuating the garden’s many walkways — some of which are set formally in stone, while others are simple pine-bark paths through the trees.
One unassuming bark trail leads to yet another jewel — a free-form stone fountain, created from Terry’s imagination and four tons of Tennessee fieldstone. Fitted with dramatic lighting, it would seem to be his signature stroke. Not so. Built into his masterwork that had no master plan is a tender message from Terry to Sandy, who never lost faith during the long days of mud and mayhem.
"There are three hearts in the design of the main water feature — one in the shape of the lighting and two in the actual shapes of the ponds," Terry reveals. "You have to view them from a certain angle. It’s not that obvious."
"It was a token," he says, smiling. "No one else would really notice. But we know they’re there."
