Named ‘North Carolina’s Most Outstanding Landscape Designer 2021” by LuxLife magazine, he has won numerous awards by Houzz, and a Perennial Plant Association award of merit in 2024 for his personal garden. He has been featured in Fine Gardening, Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens, and Country Gardens as well as in several books.
Jay cultivates a 300-square-foot courtyard garden in Davidson, NC, and a mountain escape in the western part of North Carolina where he nurtures a sunny, stylized meadow atop a septic field and a shade garden underneath a canopy of mature rhododendrons.
Read on to discover how Jay describes his philosophy in gardening, top tips for gardeners who are feeling overwhelmed this season – alongside some insightful background to some of his most well-known projects.
About You:
What first drew you to garden and landscape design, and how did your personal journey begin?
My maternal grandmother is largely responsible for instilling this love of gardening in me. By the time I was 14, I had a bedroom full of orchids and a rose garden outside. Additionally, I’ve always had a love for great design, whether it’s gardens, automobiles, architecture, art or interior design.
As an adult in my 40s, I was running a business specializing in custom aquariums. During the recession of 2008-09, I lost a significant portion of my income. To make up that deficit, I started designing gardens for some of my aquarium clients. I was turning my hobby and passion into a business. Someone told me about the website Houzz. I began offering helpful comments to readers on their garden articles. I had a thought that I’d love to write for them, but didn’t know how to contact them and had never written professionally. Several days after I had that thought, an editor from Houzz contacted me, said she’d seen my comments and was impressed, and asked me if I’d like to begin writing for them, which I did for four years. That was fate slapping me in the face! During that time, I developed a loyal following and had design requests from around the world.
Just before COVID hit the US, I finished building a home and garden in the mountains of North Carolina, which had always been a dream of mine. That garden attracted attention from around the world, and led to feature articles in several US and European magazines as well as on some prominent podcasts and YouTube channels.
Can you describe the moment you realised gardens could be immersive environments rather than just plant arrangements?
This is an exciting topic for me, one that I share in my symposium presentations. On a lonely night maybe 15 years ago, I decided to watch the original Mary Poppins movie again. When I got to the point in the movie where Mary, Bert, Jane and Michael jumped into the sidewalk chalk painting and were transported into an animated world where carousel horses jumped off the carousel and joined in a fox hunt, where dancing penguins were waiters, and where the colors were all bright and primary, I had a moment of revelation. I said to myself out loud “THIS is what a garden should be!”. Since then, I’ve been driven to create magical, immersive gardens.
How has your work evolved over the years — both in style and in philosophy?
My style has become more contemporary/modern, although I still enjoy doing woodland gardens. I make a stronger connection with the architecture than I used to.
I believe everyone deserves a beautiful, tranquil garden, but I now realize that I don’t have to design all of them. I give a lot of content out through my social media presence in an effort to help people do these things themselves.
Your Projects:
Your “Rhodwood” mountain garden won a Perennial Plant Association Award — what was the inspiration and biggest lesson from that space?
The inspiration was from the surrounding countryside. There are many abandoned agricultural fields around me, meadows where nature is reclaiming what man cleared. My county is also touted as being the “Christmas tree capital of the world”, as millions of Christmas trees are grown there. The influence has created a front garden, built atop a septic leach field, that is a stylized meadow with a perimeter planting of conifers. I’ve always loved conifers, and my garden is the result of the marriage between the genius loci and my plant passions.
Could you share a story behind one of your favourite projects — a challenge you faced and how you resolved it?
We did a project several years ago that had many challenges. The city had dug up much of the yard to redo municipal storm drains. They left a mess! There were drainage problems, replaced hardscape that didn’t function well, as well as a row of three story townhouses directly behind the yard where folks looked down and saw everything that happened in that backyard. We installed a network of french drain piping to capture water, planted a row of trees along the back, and created a very contemporary dry rill filled with big chunks of blue slag glass, underlit with waterproof LED strips. It cuts directly through a new bluestone patio with seating wall, and terminates into a pondless water feature fountain. Large masses of a limited selection of plants draws the eye in. All of this keeps the eye low and moving, so that it doesn’t look up to see peeks of the townhomes behind.
What Agriframes product would you use in the garden and how exactly?
I love the pots, especially the Zinc Planters. The quality is great. Zinc lends itself to be used in all types of garden design, from contemporary to traditional. But go big! Too many people use undersized pots, which ends up looking too busy.
Garden Design & Advice:
What’s the best piece of gardening advice you ever received?
Kill plants without regret! The best gardeners are those who aren’t afraid to try new things and to kill plants. Someone once said to me: “What separates you from a great gardener is that you haven’t killed enough plants yet!”
For gardeners who feel overwhelmed by too many choices, what’s a simple first step you recommend?
Find out what your are gardening friends are growing and is thriving. The internet can be filled with eye candy, things that you likely can’t find or can’t grow well.
Who is your gardening (or non-gardening!) heroes?
There are so many great garden designers and landscape architects out there. I’ve learned so much from studying the work of Andrea Cochran, Topher Delaney, Bernard Trainor and Julie Moir Messervy. Non-gardening hero? I think Cher, because she’s reinvented herself so many times and declined to take the many opportunities to quit that came her way. I also have reinvented myself many times, and likely will continue that into the future.
