Chris and Sarah Wyne turned a wooded lot into a moss garden that begs for bare feet, with ferns and winding stone paths beneath mature hardwoods
by Helen Yoest | photography by Liz Condo

In Chris and Sarah Wyne’s garden, rolling mounds of emerald-green moss create an enticing sort of stillness and beg for bare feet. Dotted with ferns and winding stone paths, it evokes a fairy-tale feel.

The Wynes’ home is located just outside the Raleigh city limits, in the Westridge neighborhood. The back of their home faces Richland Lake, part of the Crabtree Creek watershed. When Chris first bought the property 36 years ago, he says, “The original access to the subdivision was by two dirt roads—Reedy Creek and Trenton.” Edwards Mill Road had not yet been built.”

At the time Chris was building the house, he and Sarah were dating. After marrying a year later, Sarah and her two pre-teen daughters moved in, and the couple started focusing on the landscape. “The house was built within a mature hardwood forest, but the yard was pretty much nonexistent,” says Sarah.

A driveway runs through the middle of the property, dividing the yard into two halves.

“On the left side, near the house, there was one native dogwood—that’s where the plans for the yard started,” says Sarah. The first thing they did was add six pavers, carved to look like sleeping cats, to create a path around the tree. Then the Wynes added a rock outline to define the natural area.

“After that, we began weeding out the tiny growth in the natural areas,” says Sarah. The area was in deep shade, so she began to transplant moss to run alongside the cat stepping stones. It was so successful that they just kept going with it. “We began to gather more moss from other lots being developed, but mostly from our kind neighbors,” says Sarah. “Moss became my ultimate focus, and the heart and soul of the garden.” Though moss looks high-maintenance, it does well in the shade and only needs occasional hand-misting during a drought.

Next, Chris got to work constructing two small ponds. “Being a Pisces, I wanted a water feature,” says Sarah. They kept the ponds small to protect the roots of a nearby oak tree, and they were joined by a stream that ran under the cat stepping-stone path. But then they lost the tree to Hurricane Fran in September 1996, along with a good-sized pine tree and limbs. “Needless to say, our landscape changed,” says Sarah. “We looked at this denuded area, trying to decide how to proceed, and I thought a good-sized pond would be perfect.” With encouragement from Chris, they set a plan to move forward.

Since the new pond would be much larger, the couple decided to bring in professional help. They hired Al Newsom and Jeff Briggs from the former City Gardener landscaping company in Raleigh. “Our only request was to use the white granite rocks that ‘grew’ in the red clay,” says Sarah. Newsom offered to combine those rocks with stones from his grandmother’s farm on Yates Mill Pond Road. “The combination worked well,” Sarah says. “Al knew we wanted a natural-looking pond, one that looked as though it had always been there.”

Once the pond was built, they added plants around it, including a Japanese maple anchoring one end, and Japanese irises and autumn ferns tucked in between the stones. When finished, Sarah says, “we had a beautiful water garden with a few fish — and that eventually became a fish pond in a beautiful garden setting.”

The wildlife soon arrived, says Sarah: “We have many kinds of frogs, including one bullfrog that lived in a cave under the waterfall—I named him Godzilla to match his size. He became a game our grandchildren would play, watching him quickly hide whenever they approached his area.” Over time, young yellow slider turtles have found their way into the garden. “On occasion, a mother turtle would get into the pond, and I’d have to retrieve her; Chris would then take her to the lake for release,” says Sarah. They also had a great blue heron come to dine on their fish in the winter, so they now string fishing wire across the pond to deter it.

On the other half of the garden, the right side of the driveway, there were three beech trees and a lone 70-foot hickory “with nothing more than red clay and rock,” Sarah says. The Wynes were unsure how to proceed until Chris saw a notice in the paper that the late landscape designer David Spain was opening his moss garden. “Chris knew I loved moss, so off we went to see David’s backyard,” says Sarah. The visit to Spain’s moss garden inspired the Wynes’ next move. “While talking with David during the event, I asked if he would come help level out the area under the beech trees and build a low stone wall,” Sarah says.

They built the wall, then Sarah got to work transplanting moss to the area. “It was quite a job,” says Sarah. On a subsequent visit to the Raleigh Flea Market (now the Raleigh Market), Chris found a table and four chairs that he thought would look good on the moss area—but he soon learned that the chairs would sink into the moss. They contacted Spain again, this time to lay a stone patio. Today, the patio is a favorite spot for entertaining. “Chris and I like to host neighbors for late-afternoon drinks and hors d’oeuvres,” says Sarah.

Over time, the Wynes began filling out the garden with art. The first piece they added, which they found at Gallery C, was by the sculptor Ted Ludwiczak. Another favorite is a metal sculpture by Ellis Rodriguez found at the Art in the Garden event in Hillsborough.

When the sun lowers in the sky, with rays dappling through the trees, it’s time to wander through the moss and welcome friends. Shoes not required.  

This article originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of WALTER Magazine.