108 Wicklow Place

Cheryl and Jeff Prather began their “rescue garden” in 1997, featuring native species salvaged from endangered sites. From an upper terrace, where the statue of a young girl overlooks an ornamental pool, a sloping woodland expanse displays shade-loving trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpits, and fragrant native azaleas. Mossy stone paths lead to a stream spanned by three graceful bridges – all the handiwork of the owners – and bordered by a collector’s paradise of native plants.

The Prather Garden: Plant Rescue at its Best

The extraordinary Prather Garden is in great part a rescued garden.  Many of its native plants were adopted from plant rescues sponsored by the North Carolina Native Plant Society and other organizations that remove native plants from the path of bulldozers clearing land for new housing and other developments. 

Cheryl and Jeff Prather (pictured, right) began their garden in 1997 to help preserve a Piedmont stream forest community through better stewardship of their own backyard woodland edge, bordered by an intermittent stream that occasionally floods.  They were able to enrich existing vegetation and stabilize the woodland flood plain by planting mostly native trees and shrubs as well as ferns, wildflowers, groundcovers, and bulbs. 

Adding rescued native plants helped the Prathers restore the herbaceous layer while preserving plants that would otherwise have been destroyed – they now enjoy large sweeps of these native plants throughout their garden, and many will be in bloom during the tour days.

The Prather Garden also features stone steps, retaining walls, and a pond framed by raised beds with spring wildflowers for a more intimate view.  They did all of this work themselves – except for the steel frames on two of the three arched bridges – but relied on landscape architect Alicia Berry of Green Dreams for the conceptual long-range plan.

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