Gardening: South Hill couple create cozy oasis featuring basalt rock fireplace, wall and arch
It all started with a 3-foot tall stone pillar and a vacation to Victoria, B.C.
Rita and Ed Everstine have lived in their 1911 South Hill home for 37 years and have spent the past 11 years reworking their front yard and backyard into the perfect oasis to ride out our heat wave.
“I saw a simple stone pillar somewhere and after thinking about it. I decided to build one in the backyard,” Rita Everstine said.
A little later, they were on vacation in Victoria and decided to eat at small café. The eatery featured an outdoor patio with a stone patio and fireplace surrounded by stone walls. Ed Everstine was smitten and the construction project was on.
The Everstines’ house is in a part of the South Hill noted for large basalt columns occupying equally large chunks of people’s yards. Below ground, basalt is near the surface making digging holes for anything difficult. For the Everstines that added challenges to their project, but it also supplied building materials.
To create the closed-in, private feeling they found in the café garden, they started building a wall around their small backyard. Building the foundation meant removing two large trees and their root balls from a very small space.
Then it was digging into the basalt for the foundation and wheelbarrowing concrete into areas the cement truck couldn’t reach. On top of this they built a concrete block wall to provide the core of the wall.
Then it was time to gather all the pieces of basalt they had dug up and mortar them onto the wall. When they ran out of their own material, they collected more anywhere they could.
“Friends, neighbors. I nearly wore out my little Ranger pickup hauling them,” Ed Everstine said.
He would mix up a batch of mortar in the mornings, and Rita Everstine spent the day mortaring rocks on the wall. On top of it all, they had a deadline to get it done in time for their daughter’s wedding.
Once the wall was done, it was time to tackle the fireplace and their cozy outdoor deck room.
Their existing deck was several feet off the ground, so to get the firebox at the right height and allow for airflow they ended up building an 18-foot-tall structure.
“I learned as I went,” said Ed Everstine, who had no experience. “Don’t ever tell a blue-eyed Irishman no.”
They added a roof to the deck and set out comfortable outdoor furniture.
In their front yard the lawn was replaced by a perennial and rose garden all overseen by a gargoyle named Emmet who watches the garden from the top of a basalt arch. Rita Everstine’s rose collection features roses named for her and their children.
“Neighbors come by every week to see what has changed in the garden,” she said.
Sun-loving perennials fill the bright parts of the garden while hostas, rhododendrons and ferns fill the shady areas.