It’s been a busy spring for local beekeepers like Brooke Savage, who is hoping to prevent swarming by splitting hives before the bees feel overcrowded. Image: Eze Amos
While we humans have been preoccupied this spring, with pandemic worries and urgent national conversations, the natural world has seen other dramas unfold that most of us haven’t even noticed. Unless you’re a beekeeper, you wouldn’t know that this has been a very odd spring for honeybees.
Carrie Meslar is the managing director of the Elysium Honey Company, and she says that this year, the company’s beekeepers have reported an uptick in the number of swarms—big groups of bees leaving a hive to seek out a new home base. “They’ve never seen anything like this,” says Meslar.
A swarm happens when bees feel overcrowded in their hive. The queen leaves, taking thousands of the workers with her, and they gather in a bristly bunch on a tree or a fence post. To learn about what happens next is to gain some serious respect for the complexity and intelligence of these tiny and intensely social creatures.
“They send out scouts,” Meslar explains. “These bees go out and look for a good location for the hive.” Upon returning, the scouts communicate through dances about what they’ve found, and then—(get this!)—“a voting process takes place amongst the bees. When they reach an agreement, tens of thousands of bees leave to go and settle in a new place.”
It’s astounding, and on its own, it’s a “natural and good process,” says Meslar. “It means the colony is robust and healthy.” For beekeepers, say Karen and Ken Hall (both officers with the Central Virginia Beekeeping Association), swarming is “largely a management issue”—something to be avoided with proper attention to one’s hives.
“You want to mitigate it because you could lose half of your bees,” says Meslar. The departing swarm not only represents a loss of workforce; it actually takes away quite a bit of honey, transported inside the bees themselves. So, ideally, beekeepers hope to prevent swarming by splitting hives before the bees get crowded.
Ken Hall says there’s no hard data on whether this really has been a big year for swarming, but it’s plausible because of the weather patterns we experienced this spring. Warm temperatures in the first three months of 2020 meant some things bloomed early. “The red maple bloom was 12 days earlier than last year,” he says. But then the weather cooled and later blooms, like tulip poplar and black locust—both major food sources for bees—slowed down. In the gap between those two events, bees were very busy reproducing and gathering pollen and nectar, and hives may have gotten crowded, like a family house that’s suddenly too full of kids and all their stuff.
If bees do swarm, keepers try to capture them by gently brushing the bees into a box. That might sound death-defying, but Karen Hall says bees in a swarm pose very little danger to people. “A swarm has no colony and nothing to protect, so they are really very docile,” she says. Euphoric, even, because they’re full of honey.
The key to the operation is to capture the queen. “We watch the bees,” says Ken Hall, “and as soon as we have the queen in the box we can start to tell she’s there. They produce a pheromone as a homing scent, and the bees have to raise their abdomens high in the air to expose the gland. When we have the queen in, all of a sudden there are a lot of bees around the entrance with their abdomens raised.”
It must be a triumphant feeling for a beekeeper when that happens, but the bees aren’t aware that their colony has just been saved from an untimely demise. “A colony requires human intervention to survive,” says Karen Hall. “Effectively, your feral colonies succumb in about 14 months.”
The murder hornets—headline-grabbing, invasive species with the ability to wipe out hives, currently found only in the Pacific Northwest—are the latest potential threat to wild bees, but Meslar says they aren’t a huge worry for local beekeepers. “There are a number of simple methods we can implement to keep hives safe. The most common is a cage that sits at the exit. The holes are big enough so that bees can come and go, but it prevents the hornets from getting access into the hive.”
A more serious problem is the Varroa mite, a parasite that feeds on adult bees and larvae, making them vulnerable to certain viral diseases. Then there’s the issue of pesticides. Whether sprayed on a large scale over commercial orchards, or spritzed by homeowners onto one dandelion at a time, they can be carried back to hives by industrious bees.
The upshot is that people and honeybees need each other. They pollinate our food crops, and we safeguard their colonies—in an intricate dance, all happening amidst the unpredictability of climate change. “From year to year right now, the intensity of the differences is much more marked than it was 10 years ago,” says Meslar. “None of the years are middle of the road; everything is sort of extreme.”
Cat Thrasher transformed the front yard of her Kellytown home into a large urban garden, where she says she’s been “trying ‘square-foot gardening’ in the form of planting some things very close together.” Photo: John Robinson
Outdoor options may be limited this summer, but gardening is definitely havinga moment. Whether you’re a veteran dirt-lover or a total beginner, there’s never been a better time to dive in and cultivate some earth (or even a window box) near your home. Here are some ideas to spur you along.
Dig in: Tips for veggie-garden novices
Along with bicycling and bread-baking, these homebound pandemic times have seen a rise in another kinder, gentler pastime—gardening. It’s being driven not only by all the extra hours at home, but by a certain amount of uneasiness around food supplies. Lots of us are eyeing those unused corners of our lawns, wondering if they could become more productive.
Starting a garden for the first time is both simple and daunting. Plants have only a few basic needs: good soil, water, and sun. But, for newbies, it can seem like there are a thousand ways to go wrong. If you’re a beginner, here are a few tips to help break it down.
Select your site
The ideal site is well away from trees (which compete for water and nutrients), well-drained, well-lit, and not too compacted—i.e., not a place where cars have been parking or people have beaten a path. But that ideal spot doesn’t always exist. You may have an excess of shade, a problem with swampiness after it rains, or just limited space.
The good news is that a garden doesn’t have to be large to provide food. Think small at first. Can you squeeze in a couple of tomatoes along the front walk? Is there space for a trellis along a south wall for pole beans to climb? If you already plant petunias or other annual flowers, could you intersperse them with lettuce or herbs?
If you really can’t put plants in the ground, think about containers. They can do very well on a deck or even a windowsill, as long as you water faithfully.
Prepare the ground
Raised beds have become so popular that you may think they’re a requirement. But they make it harder to start a brand-new garden—you have to get involved in carpentry before you can plant anything, and then you have to obtain soil. All this can get expensive and time-consuming. At my house, we’ve found it much easier to plant in the ground and focus on improving the soil we have.
When we want to establish a new bed, we first remove the sod with a mattock. This tool makes it easy to just peel away the grass by the roots, but if you don’t have one, you could also use a shovel or spade. Then we loosen the soil with a spade fork—again, a shovel will do in a pinch. Finally, we mix in about three inches of compost. For a small garden, you can buy compost in bags. Horse manure works well too, and stables are usually happy to give it away.
Choose your crops wisely
It feels good to succeed in a garden, so start with things that are relatively foolproof, like green beans, basil, and mint. The next tier of crops would include stuff like salad and cooking greens, tomatoes, peppers, summer and winter squash—these are not difficult to grow, but they do sometimes get hit by pests or disease. The trickiest crops, in my experience, are broccoli, onions, carrots, and cabbage. They’re well worth the space if you have room to spare, but success is far from guaranteed.
Photo: John Robinson
Timing
It’s nearly June, too late to start most veggie crops from seed. (Greens, tomatoes, and peppers get planted indoors in early March.) What you can do now is buy most crops as starts, at a garden center or direct from a farmer. And it’s not too late—in fact, it’s the perfect time—to direct-seed heat-loving crops like beans, squash, corn, and okra.
It’ll feel counterintuitive, but in the height of summer—mid- to late July—you can try planting seeds of cool-weather fall crops: kale, collards, lettuce, spinach, and beets.
Plant carefully
Find the healthiest plant starts you can—vigorous, not too “leggy” (that’s the term for plants with gangly stems)—and put them in the ground when the soil is moist, but not wet and clumpy. Loosen the soil all around where you’re making a hole for your baby plant, and dig deep enough that when you place the plant in the hole, the potting soil will sit slightly below ground level. Water daily for the first few days.
Make provisions for deer
If you’ve ever seen a deer in your yard or neighborhood, then you’ll want to think about protecting your plants. Deer can do more damage in one night than any other pest; they especially like leafy greens, but they’ll hit tomatoes and peppers too. If a tall fence is not in the cards for you, you might consider buying or mixing up some organic repellent spray (there are recipes online).
Keep an eye on water and weeds
Now comes the patience part. The plants won’t need much from you except a regular check-in, preferably once a day. Keep soil moist and pull out the bigger weeds. If you see insect pests like tomato worms or squash beetles, you can pull them off by hand.
Fertilize
That compost you added will feed your plants all season, but you can also boost their growth with organic fertilizers. Garden stores have lots of options, from blood meal (really!) to fish emulsion. And here’s a nice fact: Rainwater contains nitrogen, one of the main nutrients plants crave. So watering from a rain barrel is an extra advantage.
Enjoy the process
That daily check-in is not only for the plants’ sake, it’s a ritual that feeds the gardener’s soul. The growth of plants is a salve in times of stress, and paying attention to your garden’s progress—maybe taking photos or notes—is half the fun. Keeping a garden journal, if you intend to garden again next year, is also a helpful way to track info—things like planting dates, timing of the harvest, and when you fertilize.
Enjoy the bounty
The other half of the fun is eating what you grew. If you’re lucky, you’ll be overwhelmed —drowning in cucumbers, or unloading zucchini on your neighbors’ doorsteps in the dead of night. But there’s a lot of satisfaction in successfully growing even one tomato—one perfect, plump, tangy-sweet, deep-red tomato. Savor it!
Photo: John Robinson
Digging deeper: Local permaculturists design gardens for the longterm
If you’ve gardened in the past and have a handle on the basics, you might be eyeing the next-level approach to growing food. Maybe you suspect that you could get more bounty out of the same square footage, or you might be looking to do things in a more sustainable way. For a lot of folks, that means permaculture—a system for designing gardens (and, more broadly, homesteads and communities) that’s gotten a lot of traction in recent years.
The word is a contraction of “permanent” and “agriculture” (or just “culture”). The name implies long-term resilience. Christine Gyovai, who with her husband Reed Muehlman owns the Charlottesville firm Dialogue + Design Associates, first studied permaculture in California at the turn of the millennium. Since 2007, the couple has lived on a nine-acre homestead in western Albemarle, where they designed and built a straw-bale house. “We knew going into it we wanted to use permaculture principles here,” she says. “It was helpful that we took at least a year to observe the land before we did anything.”
That’s one of permaculture’s first principles: observing natural conditions (like water flow, sun, wind, and wildlife), and designing in a way that protects and mimics those systems. For example, in nature, plants don’t grow in straight, uniform rows, surrounded by bare soil; they form more of a multi-layered mix. Gyovai and Muehlman have a “forest garden” that uses that structure: trees over shrubs over ground-level plants.
Christine Gyovai, who co-owns Dialogue + Design Associates, abided by one of permaculture’s first principles before building a straw- bale house in western Albemarle: observe natural conditions like water flow, sun, wind, and wildlife. Photo: John Robinson
“It has an upper story including apples, pears, and pawpaws,” she explains. “Then there’s a shrub layer with nitrogen fixers”—those are plants that make nitrogen available in the soil for other plants. Among many other plants, “we have New Jersey tea, baptisia, false blue indigo, and comfrey, which is a dynamic accumulator. It draws nutrients up from deep in the soil and makes them available for plants on the surface. Once a year or more, we do chop-and-drop mulching”—cutting down the comfrey and laying the leaves on the ground as a nutrient-rich mulch. Strawberries and other plants form the ground-cover level.
Permaculture suggests dividing a property into “zones” based on how often you’ll frequent each area. Most people usually stick close to their dwellings, so gardens will get more attention if they’re in that zone one or two. Gyovai and Muehlman cultivate a kitchen garden for veggies, intentionally sited very close to their house. “They are largely keyhole-shaped beds designed to maximize growing areas and minimize pathways,” says Gyovai, adding that the compost pile is also in zone one, right next to the kitchen garden. “It’s easy to run outside and pop things in the compost. That fosters energy cycling and recycling.”
Further-flung zones include things that need somewhat less attention—like beehives and larger-scale compost—and wilderness space that only gets visited occasionally.
Connections to the community beyond one’s property are part of the philosophy, too. Danielle Castellano and her family live on a permaculture homestead in Fauquier County, where they attempt to produce quite a bit of food—this spring, for example, they’ve been busy inoculating logs with 2,000 mushroom plugs. Still, she says, it’s important to ask, “How can we be supporting farming friends and neighbors? We’re not trying to produce absolutely everything.” She sources eggs, meat, and raw milk from other farms as a way of strengthening ties within a “larger ecosystem.”
Gyovai has taught permaculture design for years, designs professionally, and helps run the Blue Ridge Permaculture Network. If you’re interested in learning more, check out that group’s Facebook page, or sign up for this fall’s permaculture design course through the Shenandoah Permaculture Institute.
Since they moved to Bulgaria nearly four years ago, 5,000 miles have separated Nancy and Victor Schiller from their former home in Charlottesville. But some of their work in their adopted country looks remarkably similar to what they did as volunteers with the local Community Investment Collaborative. Through the America for Bulgaria Foundation, the couple has transplanted key ideas from the CIC to a new and very different setting.
At the CIC, where the couple served various roles including mentor and board member, the Schillers felt they were witnessing truly effective programs. The CIC offers entrepreneurship workshops, mentoring, financing, and co-working space. “This was really changing people’s lives profoundly for the good,” says Victor, remembering the fledgling companies that got their start through the CIC. “These were real businesses that would build up, continue, and sustain.”
The Schillers had long been part of the business world. Victor worked in high-tech entrepreneurship in the U.S., while Nancy had worked with the Bulgarian-American Enterprise Fund Bulgaria since shortly after the fall of communism. When they relocated in 2016 and Nancy became the CEO of the America for Bulgaria Foundation, they brought their professional experience as well as their belief that the CIC offered viable models for small-business development.
“When we looked at what was going on in Bulgaria, particularly in small communities, there was such a need for this kind of training,” says Nancy. “The program we adapted and adopted here in Bulgaria, it’s very comparable; the businesses are almost mirror images of what’s done in Charlottesville.”
Through the Foundation, which was established in 2009 with a $400 million endowment, aspiring entrepreneurs in eight Bulgarian communities enter a 13-week training course, build a community with other businesspeople and mentors, and gain access to financing.
“Eighty-five percent are women,” explains Nancy, “because we work in smaller communities where the men do mining and metal work and things like that. The women are mostly homebound, and they’re looking to start businesses”—ranging from bakeries to small hotels to tech companies. “They have great ideas and skills; they just need to understand how the finances work.”
Although the legacy of communism in Eastern Europe, as well as legal differences country to country, have meant that CIC-style programs need some adaptation for the new location, the Schillers see the same dynamics among Bulgarian clients and volunteers that they remember from their Charlottesville days. “It’s the community-driven aspect that makes it really click, in Charlottesville and here,” says Victor. “Everybody realizes it’s transformational for individuals and families; that’s why people stay excited.”
Adds Nancy, “Business is business no matter where you are.”
Spring is coming, and so is the Tom Tom Summit & Festival. [UPDATE: Originally slated for April, Tom Tom has been rescheduled for September 21-27, 2020.] Every year, the event mixes music, community art projects, and a plethora of innovative business ideas. We caught up with Tom Tom’s executive director, Paul Beyer, for a look ahead at this year’s fest.
Can you share any success stories coming out of Tom Tom’s business competitions?
Tom Tom’s competitions range from crowd-funded pitch nights targeted toward individuals and very early-stage small business to equity-based challenges seeking to match investors with scalable technology companies. Over the past several years, there have been hundreds of thousands of dollars invested at Tom Tom. Success at Tom Tom can mean a start-up entrepreneur receiving the encouragement to keep going—even if they don’t “win”—or an investment. Last year’s winner of the crowdfunded pitch night was Babylon Microfarms. They have continued to grow, and recently raised $2.3M in capital to expand their business.
What will help Charlottesville thrive in the 21st century on the creative, entrepreneurial, industry, and innovation side?
My dream for 21st-century Charlottesville is one in which we’re able to become a welcoming home to all types of residents—a city that is filled with opportunity, and encouraging to dreamers, creators, and entrepreneurs. In terms of opportunity, we’re beginning to make real strides here with various educational and entrepreneurial programs that level the playing field. In terms of encouragement, that is something that we as a community have to continue to get better at. In a lot of respects, Charlottesville is a very successful and affluent place, and thus it can fall into complacency. We can sometimes be a little apathetic or even negative to new ideas. At Tom Tom we really try to make sure that creators of all kinds are honored and celebrated.
How has Tom Tom been integral to pushing those qualities forward since it was founded?
I think Tom Tom’s best quality is being grassroots, which allows many people to contribute in different ways. We invite people to join our programs or to create their own to accomplish their organization’s goals. I’d like to think that creates a sense of “ownership.” Tom Tom’s goal is to create a platform that can model how stakeholders can work together throughout the year.
How do you see local organizations and artists contributing to business development locally?
One of Charlottesville and Albemarle’s best assets is a vibrant culture and quality of life— which are directly related to the artists and nonprofits in the region. We wouldn’t have anywhere near the level of startup activity if entrepreneurs didn’t want to locate here and stay here. Of course, one of my biggest concerns—one that is shared by many of our neighbors—is that our housing and commercial spaces are increasingly unaffordable, and many artists have been priced out of living here.
What sort of business-related headliners can we expect in April?
We’ll be announcing our headliners in the coming weeks. They include Bruce Katz, author of The New Localism, and The Atlantic’s Jim and Deb Fallows, all of whom write about the conditions that communities need to foster in order to have more vibrant and prosperous entrepreneurial communities. We also have serial entrepreneur Tiffany Norwood and restauranteur/chef (and UVA grad) Tanya Holland heading our way.
As trips to the grocery store become daunting, the edible offerings in nature take on greater appeal. File photos
Years ago, in the spring, I was out for a run in a rural spot and encountered an elderly man who told me he was hunting “dryland cress”—an edible plant. I was enchanted; it was like he’d stepped from the pages of that 1973 Foxfire volume on my shelf, in which Appalachian old-timers shared secrets of wild foods—plants with fabulous names like kedlick and warlock. Foods that never darken the door of a supermarket.
Though I was intrigued, I had nary a clue about how to acquire such knowledge. I did have an amateur interest in plants, though, which surged every spring. I like tracking when trees and wildflowers bloom, and each year I’ve tried to learn a few more plants’ names, whether native ephemeral flowers or hardy weeds in the lawn. Inevitably, the question of which ones are edible has become part of that learning curve.
In this strangest of springs, with the acquisition of groceries having suddenly become a worrisome, uncertain undertaking, foraging wild food takes on new immediacy. The situation neatly illustrates how dependent we’ve been on human systems for our food. In winter, if I wanted fresh salad greens, I bought them from the store. But now we’re trying not to shop more than once every two weeks. And even if a tub of greens lasted two weeks in the fridge, which it won’t, I can’t count on getting that tub in the first place. The last time we ordered groceries for curbside pickup, a third of the items we chose weren’t available. Along with our brown bags, we received a list of all the stuff we couldn’t have and would just have to do without.
It’s wonderful that the local food economy is still finding ways to connect eaters with farmers, but that system too has its limitations, and its risks—largely because of a lack of coherent guidance about how to safely conduct business. And for those who have lost their livelihoods, of course, there’s another, much deeper layer of worry around the task of putting food on the table.
Amidst all this, plants we can eat are busy growing in the yard, in the woods, and on the edges of fields. Even as nature presents one of its most frightening aspects in the form of the virus itself, it is also quietly offering sustenance and nourishment that is independent of those fragile, flawed human food systems. At my house, we’ve been eating more wild foods this year than ever before. I still don’t possess esoteric folk wisdom about plants, and most of our calories still come from the store. But I’ve read about foraging and talked with knowledgeable people and have learned, to my delight, that foraging food can be very simple, even convenient.
The best lesson was that many ubiquitous weeds, things that just about everyone can identify, are edible. Violets and dandelions both have edible greens and flowers. Those redbud trees blooming everywhere you look? You can eat their flowers, too. Voila: a lovely salad, fresh and free. A little later in spring, lambs’ quarters appear—also known, for good reason, as wild spinach.
Next we learned to identify chickweed and garlic mustard, both very common and useful. Someone mentioned chickweed pesto; my mind opened further. I heard we could drink tea from white pine needles. A friend taught me to recognize spicebush, to nibble its flowers and make tea from its twigs. It seemed like one of those closely guarded secrets at the time, but I soon realized spicebush is an extremely widespread plant in our local forests.
I got a book—John Kallas’ Edible Wild Plants—and it revealed instructions for both the labor-intensive (making your own marshmallows from, well, mallow plants) and the beautifully easy (using oxeye daisy flowers as a garnish). With my kids, I read the classic My Side of the Mountain, in which a boy learns to live in the Catskills with almost total self-sufficiency: a little fanciful, but somehow reassuring, too.
My latest inspiration is an Instagram account, @mallorylodonnell, which daily supplies me with amazing new ideas (like sautéed hosta shoots). As with any wild-food information, I’ll verify these tips with other sources before I try them myself, but the empowering takeaway is that food is everywhere—taking so many more forms than we’ve been trained to believe by the standard grocery-store selection.
Also, deep forests aren’t required for successful foraging—even of gourmet delicacies. I’ve had more time than ever before for hunting morel mushrooms this spring, and I have put in my hours walking in the woods. But the only morels we’ve actually found were growing right behind our mailbox. Cooked gently in butter, with a splash of cream, they were divine: a real gift from the ground.
A cross between a mango and a banana, the pawpaw is enjoying a bit of a renaissance in Virginia—in landscaping and cocktails.
It’s becoming the most popular fruit you’ve never tried—or have you? Pawpaws are having a moment, so if you’re the sort who likes to sample new things, you may well have gotten your taste buds on a pawpaw already.
Not that pawpaws are “new.” Actually, they’re native to the Appalachians, and they have a long history in local food that famously includes being enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The wild plants present an invitation and a challenge to foragers when the fruit ripens in late summer. As a cultivated tree, the pawpaw comes in several varieties. Michael McConkey has been selling pawpaw trees since he opened Edible Landscaping in 1987.
“They are our best seller by far,” he says, adding that the pawpaw is seeing a “little renaissance” among home orchardists. Virginia State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman even sponsored a bill in the General Assembly this year that would have made the pawpaw the official state fruit. (The measure, HB 592, was pushed off until 2021.)
Local food and drink producers are on the pawpaw train, too. With their soft, custardy texture and tropical banana-mango flavor, the fruit of Asimina triloba are certainly distinctive. South Street Brewery, which offered Pawpaw Moon sour ale in 2018, called them “odd and delicious” when announcing the beer on Facebook. Ian Glomski, the founder of Charlottesville’s Vitae Spirits, says although pawpaw doesn’t please everyone, it definitely has its devotees.
He didn’t know what to expect from it, but Vitae’s Paw Paw Liqueur has been a good seller. Glomski, who sees it as a “very Charlottesville” product given the Jefferson connection, plans to concoct more this fall. The process involves using flash-frozen pawpaw pulp, sourced from a farm in southern Ohio, to infuse flavor into a rum base. “Through tastings, we decided it needed more acidity, so we added some citric acid,” he says. “Pawpaws are pretty tropical, not very acidic, and I wanted a little more balance of sweetness and aromas.”
Two years ago, Richmond’s Blue Bee Cider used wild pawpaws, foraged near the James River, to infuse a limited-edition batch of Gold Rush apple cider. “I happen to live close to the river, and I learned how to identify the trees,” says Blue Bee’s Brian Ahnmark. “We did a collaboration with Väsen Brewing where we fermented Gold Rush cider in a chardonnay barrel they provided, which had previously held a grapefruit tripel beer of theirs.” The blend of flavors—mango and banana from the pawpaw, creamy vanilla notes from the chardonnay, and pineapple from the beer—“turned out really well,” Ahnmark says. “We left it noncarbonated; we liked the mouthfeel without bubbles.”
Vitae Spirits’ Paw Paw Liqueur utilizes the fruit’s pulp and infuses it into a rum base. Photo: John Robinson
He’d like to do something similar again in the future, but foraging is unpredictable, and it can be tricky to tell when pawpaws are ripe. With such a truly local fruit—which has a short shelf life—one must take a Zen attitude, and enjoy the bounty if and when it arrives.
Micah LeMon of The Alley Light has taken an interest in foraging pawpaws and, when they’re in season, he likes to offer a pawpaw daiquiri.
Making it is not simple, since he first undertakes a multi-step process to make a pawpaw cordial. “It takes a lot of work,” he acknowledges.
You can always eat a pawpaw as nature made it, scooping out the flesh from around the large, beanlike seeds. Fans also enjoy pawpaw jellies, smoothies, and pies. But McConkey thinks there’s something even tastier: “The best,” he says, “is pawpaw ice cream.”
When Brad and Cathy Coyle decided to buy a house in the Lewis Mountain neighborhood, they knew it needed some work. But they thought it would be mostly a vacation rental property, plus an occasional weekend pied-à-terre for themselves, and they figured the scope of work was minimal. “It was just a paint job we started with,” jokes Peter LaBau of Goodhouse Design, the Charlottesville architectural firm that ended up overseeing a major renovation on the property.
LaBau’s statement is an exaggeration, of course, but in the beginning the Coyles had cosmetic updates in mind for what had previously been a long-term rental—refinishing floors, repainting, and so on. Still, the couple, who are based in Northern Virginia, found themselves settling into the place more than they’d expected to. “We both went to school here,” says Cathy, “and our kids have all gone here. We always enjoyed spending time in Charlottesville.”
Attracted to the property by its 1930s character (LaBau calls it “colonial-meets-arts-and-crafts”) the Coyles gradually developed a clearer vision of what the place’s potential might be, and little by little the scope of work expanded. “It’s funny how incrementally it happened,” says LaBau.
There were some real downsides to the house and landscape. One of the biggest was a dark interior, the result of both a closed-off floor plan and untended plantings outside. “The front door was just a door, with no sidelights,” remembers Brad. “It was overgrown with bamboo, and there were bushes that came all the way to the back door.”
In the cozy-comfy living room, the geometry of the coffered ceiling, boxy blue club chairs, and cube-shaped side table impart an embracing, structured feel. Photo: Peter LaBau
“I was impressed these guys could see through it,” says LaBau of his clients.
Another problem was an outdated kitchen that, like many built in the early 20th century, was quite separate from the rest of the house. “Back then, the kitchen wasn’t something you wanted your friends to see,” says LaBau. Removing the wall between kitchen and dining room would help connectivity, but the rooms would still be tiny. “We took a stab at what could we do within the footprint we had,” says LaBau, “but there wasn’t enough room.”
Thus an addition became part of the project—initially, just a small bump out to make for a more generous kitchen. That led LaBau, Goodhouse co-principal Jessie Chapman, and their clients to start rethinking the entrance to that part of the house.
“We figured the back door would get used most”—being handy to the parking—“so we considered the sequence to get from the car to the kitchen, through a mudroom,” says LaBau. Now, the door opens into a spacious mudroom with a laundry closet. The refrigerator lives here too, right next to the kitchen doorway.
Punctuated with a starry chandelier, the main bedroom feels a little bit country, with plenty of space and a rustic board-and-beam ceiling. Photo: Peter LaBau
Still, the addition—around 300 square feet total—had one more job to do: accommodate a bathroom that would allow an existing family room to function as a first-floor master suite. What’s more, the landscape around the rear entrance started to look inadequate, too. The back door wasn’t particularly convenient, being hemmed in by a retaining wall that held back a steeply sloped yard.
So in the end, the scope of work included removing the overgrown plantings, regrading the backyard, relocating the retaining wall, and adding a patio. While they were at it, the team redesigned the front porch to make it deeper and more usable.
“This is the result of thousands of decisions,” says LaBau: “improving one thing, and the thing next to it doesn’t look right.”
“I don’t think there’s a square inch of the property that hasn’t been touched,” says Brad.
Bracketed by the back of the house and a substantial stone wall, the well- furnished patio is like an outdoor room for entertaining and relaxing. Photo: Peter LaBau
To achieve the transformation from dreary rental to light-filled home meant plenty of modernizing, of course, but LaBau says the house itself—with its many charming historic details—provided all the design precedent he and Chapman needed.
“All the clues were there,” says LaBau. “We had so much to work with—molding profiles, cabinetry styles…” The Coyles loved the details in the main living area, including a coffered ceiling and arched doorways. Adding a heart-pine mantelpiece to the fireplace was enough to spiff it up. The design called for a small den off the living room, contiguous with the larger space; the little room let in a flood of natural light and gained the Coyles a bar and seating nook.
In the revamped kitchen, the team brought in details from the dining room to make the newly combined space feel like a whole. “We replicated these ceiling beams coming across to make it feel like one space,” says LaBau. New oak flooring matches the old exactly, and wainscoting carries seamlessly into the new kitchen.
A peninsula topped with marble provides space for bar stools, and Shaker cabinets blend with subway tile that travels all the way up the rear wall, which features a symmetrical arrangement of open shelving and operable windows. A former utilities chase, now unneeded, was recaptured as built-in shelving which, with its arched frame, looks as though it could have been original to the house.
“It didn’t need to be gigantic,” LaBau says of the kitchen. Indeed it’s not, but its continuity with the dining room makes it feel plenty spacious.
In the master bedroom, a sophisticated cottage feel prevails—quite a change from its utilitarian origin as a garage. Converted into a family room by the previous owners, LaBau and Chapman took it to a new level for the Coyles by vaulting the ceiling. Cathy suggested adding built-in cabinets above the window in the gable end, and completed the bedroom transformation with a blue grasscloth wallpaper she’d had her eye on for a while.
The kitchen is highly functional and unfussy. The wood-floored hallway serves as a hub for the bar, hallway to the dining room, and staircase to the upper rooms. Photo: Peter LaBau
“We were adamant about keeping the radiators in here,” says Brad, who likes preserving historic details where possible. Still functional, the radiators provide a comfortable heat that makes the HVAC system unnecessary in the cooler months.
Upstairs, a pair of bedrooms stayed as-is, but the shared bathroom got an update in a similar palette to the two downstairs baths: white marble, grays and blues, and vintage materials like hexagonal floor tiles and chrome. “I wanted to keep it bright,” says Cathy.
Though it remains traditional, the house’s exterior is significantly refreshed with new siding—clapboard in places, board-and-batten in others—and new double porch columns that lend formality and “a stronger presence,” LaBau says. The rear patio, which replaced a narrow walkway, has room for a dining table and fire pit.
The Coyles are still in their first year of using the property after the 18-month renovation, and they’re spending more time there than they expected to. “It was a weekend game-day house,” says Brad, “and now it’s expanding into weekdays.”
Kevin Burke, left, stands under the north-facing sawtooth roof of 1212 Bordeaux, the California office building his Charlottesville firm built for Google. Image: Google/Prakash Pratel Photography
Inside a North Downtown live-work space called Timepiece, the groundbreaking firm Parabola Architecture is quietly tackling some of the big design questions of our time. Co-founders Carrie Meinberg Burke and Kevin Burke designed Timepiece 20 years ago as a place to house both their family and the architectural practice, envisioning the building as a “focusing device” for syncing with the world’s basic rhythms. Daily and annual movements of light determine the angles of interior stair walls and the curved roof form.
Then, in 2016, the firm was entrusted with the formidable challenge of designing Google’s first ground-up office building, known as 1212 Bordeaux after its address in Sunnyvale, California. The project expanded the 4D experiential concepts from Timepiece to meet Google’s goal of solving for both focus and collaboration in the workplace. Deeply unconventional in form, 1212 defines distinct zones of light, thermal comfort, and acoustics. Its spaces range from the buzz of a sunny cafe to a vast, softly daylit workspace with sky views.
Parabola’s integrated expertise suggests design maxims that can apply to any scale or typology —including some of the design challenges facing Charlottesville, where they’re excited to be taking on more local projects.
Kevin Burke and Carrie Meinberg Burke, Parabola’s co-founders, believe that architecture of all types should begin with deep understanding of each site. Image: Google/Prakash Pratel Photography
1. Forces evolve form
Parabola’s guiding ethos is “forces evolve form.” The maxim rests on the foundational idea that a building can be a response to forces—natural and human—at a site, rather than a reiteration of a particular style, be it traditional or trendy.
2. Fittingness
For Parabola, dedicated observation of a site, from sun and wind to human context, has to be the first step in designing fitting architecture. “The key is to uncover design drivers from that knowledge,” says Meinberg Burke. This approach preempts “the rush to preconceived form”—the designer’s initial urge to fill the blank page—and instead derives form from site-specific forces of nature and culture. Beauty and cutting-edge performance (1212 is certified LEED Platinum) are the results.
3. Design out, build in
An emphasis on human and ecological health is part of Parabola’s DNA, based on the partners’ extensive background with Cradle to Cradle (the design philosophy of longtime Charlottesville firm William McDonough + Partners, where Burke was studio director) and the Living Building Challenge (a rigorous performance standard for buildings and part of Meinberg Burke’s expertise). Parabola’s approach is to consciously “design out” components with potentially adverse impacts, focusing instead on the presence of essential, authentic materials. In the case of 1212, this meant an untreated exposed steel structure that retains the markings of its manufacture, and innovative prefabricated concrete insulated panels that create both the interior and exterior finish of the building, without layers of additional materials and finishes.
Photo: Kevin Burke Photography
4. Design the ethereal elements
Light, air, temperature, sound, and scale—the intangibles—drove ancient design, and Parabola often draws from this principle. Timepiece is calibrated to daylight through an oculus in the roof, creating a focused beam of light that skims surfaces throughout the interior, the opposite of the shadow cast on a sundial. 1212 admits daylight through an extensive north-facing saw-tooth roof, affording views to the sky and a sense of changing light conditions throughout the day, all within a space that has the soft acoustics of a library reading room.
Those intangibles also explain why employees and visitors have remarked that the Google building seems to “have a soul.” Burke notes: “When design focuses on the human senses, there’s an alchemy that occurs well beyond the measurable benefits.”
Timepiece, Parabola’s Charlottesville live/work space, admits daylight through an oculus in the roof, creating a focused beam of light that skims surfaces throughout the interior. Daily and annual movements of light determined architectural form, such as the stair wall angles and curved roof form. Photo: Prakash Patel Photography
5. Calibrate experiences
Human scale and senses are among the factors that evolve form. “Human beings are the given,” says Meinberg Burke. Thinking about what occupants would see and hear in the space informed Parabola’s design of daylight, sightlines and acoustical systems at 1212. Windows tilted north disperse light evenly, obviating the glare of direct sunbeams and allowing occupants to glimpse the sky. Absorptive materials and a sound-masking system soften and cancel background noise.
She and Burke view lighting on the Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall as a feature that could benefit from a similarly experience-focused design. “When you’re sitting in certain places on the Mall at night, you’re blinded,” she says. Awareness of contrast ratio and calibrated placement of light fixtures would mean a better experience.
6. Constraints enable innovation
Architects can look at limitations—like building codes, budgets, and timelines—not as obstacles but rather as engines for design innovation. Parabola delivered 1212 on time (the process took just 22 months) and within a conventional budget, while still meeting Google’s goals for human and environmental health. “Google gave the challenge back to us,” says Burke, paraphrasing the client thus: “We don’t want to expand the budget or timeline. Within those enabling constraints, what can we get?”
He and Meinberg Burke say that cities, Charlottesville included, can write impactful constraints into building codes—for example, defining zoning envelopes with solar orientation in mind to carve out space to bring light to rooftops and pedestrians. Experientially, the south side of the street is vastly different from the north side, and this ought to be a consideration in urban design, Burke says.
Kevin Burke and Carrie Meinberg Burke, Parabola’s co-founders, believe that architecture of all types should begin with deep understanding of each site. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
7. Master builder model
Tight teamwork is the key to succeeding within given limits. Parabola’s commitment to a flowing give-and-take with builders and other collaborators has its roots in their experience as the contractor on Timepiece. The project revolutionized their approach to communicating design intent to those who will enact it.
“That was a profound realization that we’ve carried forward to our subsequent projects,” Meinberg Burke says. “On 1212, our role was to establish the design vision and to communicate the why of a design, all the way through construction. That enabled the builders to infuse their intelligence and experience.” The project has won numerous awards, including California AIA’s Leading Edge award for excellence in design and sustainable performance.
Similarly, this master-builder design process infuses the builder’s wisdom during the earliest phases of design, and design thinking throughout construction, an approach that could translate well to Charlottesville’s new development projects.
8. Reveal craft
To “design out” fireproofing, say, not only eliminates unhealthy materials; it allows the building’s steel structure (the “bones of the building”) to speak to its users. 1212 showcases construction markings on its structural frame and makes exposed steel a significant aesthetic element. The work of tradespeople and craftspeople is fully on view.
“People can tell when something’s been made with care,” says Meinberg Burke. “The only way to do that is to fully engage everyone in the process, and allow them the opportunity to manifest their own work.”
9. Adaptability
A large, open span inside 1212, free from structural columns, not only makes the interior pleasing to users, it means that the building will have great adaptability for different functions in the future. “Look at the Downtown Mall,” says Burke. “Ninety percent of those storefronts and interiors have been adapted and changed. Buildings need to be robust enough to allow for constant change and evolution of use.”
Within the tech industry specifically, he adds, there’s a persistent need for flexibility, which Charlottesville architecture will have to address in order to attract high-tech businesses. “In the tech workplace there’s a preference for co-locating teams that expand and contract, and open, democratic workplaces supported by a range of private meeting room types,” he says. “Companies will want to continuously evolve the way they’re working, and the architecture needs to support this evolution.”
10. Design for life
“We think design can enhance health and quality of life,” says Meinberg Burke. In Sunnyvale, the native habitat is oak savanna, not the irrigated green lawns of what had become a suburban context. 1212, to which Charlottesville firm SiteWorks contributed landscape design, is “an island of the native,” says Burke.
If human and ecological health are inextricably connected, Parabola says, then the notion of biophilia—our innate love of nature—is activated by built environments where occupants experience natural rhythms: daylight, weather, and seasons.
Building a bluebird box is a good project for a hobbyist woodworker, but most people don’t tackle quite as many boxes at once as Clark Walter. At certain times of the year, Walter’s woodworking shop in Ivy is packed nearly to the rafters with the parts and pieces that make up his bluebird box assembly line. Since 2012, he’s supplied homemade boxes to a growing contingent of naturalists and bird enthusiasts in central Virginia and well beyond.
It started when Walter took the Virginia Master Naturalist course. Based at Virginia Tech and sponsored by a raft of state agencies, the VMN program is well-known for training citizen scientists in 40-hour courses that cover everything from ecology to geology to native flora and fauna. “It’s much like taking a couple of college courses,” says Walter.
The idea is to train volunteers who can then take on projects around the state, doing conservation, education, and so on. A master naturalist must log at least 40 volunteer hours per year to remain certified, so as he went through the course, Walter was considering how to spend those hours.
A presentation by Ann Dunn, of the Virginia Bluebird Society, caught his attention. He had a background with birds: Before retiring, he’d worked with various nonprofits that did endangered- species conservation, including programs to reintroduce birds to their native habitats. “In the state of Ohio,” he says, “we built a collaboration to reintroduce trumpeter swans…that was very exciting and has shown great results.”
Bluebirds, as it happens, are a species with a fraught ecological history, having suffered a heavy blow to their population after the arrival of Europeans in North America. The introduction of invasive starlings and house sparrows means stiff competition for nesting spots; like bluebirds, they’re cavity nesters and raise young in openings like you’d find in a standing dead tree.
Meanwhile, the number of available nesting sites has declined. “As we develop more areas across Virginia, and it becomes an increasingly urbanized state, we don’t tend to leave standing dead trees in our yards,” says Michelle Prysby, director of the VMN program. Indeed, bird populations in the U.S. and Canada are suffering huge declines due to habitat loss: They’re down 29 percent since 1970.
For decades now, a coordinated conservation effort has tried to counteract these forces for bluebirds (and, along the way, their fellow native cavity nesters like chickadees and tree swallows) by providing artificial nesting sites. A relatively simple wooden box, affixed to a pole or tree in the right spot—bluebirds prefer open land to forest—can make a big difference to a nesting pair and their offspring.
Over time, thanks to individuals who put up boxes in their backyards, as well as organizations like the Bluebird Society that establish clusters of nest boxes (called “trails”) and assign volunteers to monitor what happens there, the population of bluebirds has made a real comeback.
For VMN volunteers, says Prysby, “Bluebird projects are really popular across all of our 30 chapters, because people really enjoy going to monitor the boxes, and they feel like they’re getting a tangible result when they see that a bluebird or a chickadee is using it.”
It doesn’t hurt that, as Dunn says, “Bluebirds are very attractive.”
That first year after completing the VMN course, Walter built 10 bluebird boxes for a trail he and Dunn established on the short street where he lives in Ivy. He placed them in backyards and fields, bringing his neighbors on board. “We’ve gotten a great response,” he says, “and the population density in our area seems to be growing.”
Simple enough. But that was only the beginning. “I mentioned the project to the class and took orders for another 25,” Walter says. When he delivered those, more students, and instructors, placed another 40 orders.
Clark Walter has built over 2,000 bluebird houses.
Fortunately, Walter has a woodshop and a genetic advantage: His grandfather was an inventor and industrial engineer—“a brilliant guy,” Walter says. “I sort of have his organizational thing behind me.” He figured out how to streamline the box-building process, cutting all the pieces at once, then assembling. That was a good move, because the number of orders is still blowing up.
Bird clubs and conservation groups in Charlottesville lined up to buy. Then groups in nearby counties. “A year later, VMN and the VBS were promoting it statewide, so within three years people were driving from Blacksburg and all corners of the state to pick up their orders.” Word spread to other states, from New York to Kentucky. The year the magazine of the North American Bluebird Society ran an article about Walter, he ended up building almost 700 boxes. “It got a little out of control,” he says modestly.
How did he become the go-to guy? For one thing, he sells all the boxes at cost: $35-39, including the mounting pole. For another thing, he builds the boxes to official specs—the opening just the right size to admit bluebirds but keep out starlings, plus a predator baffle to keep snakes from eating hatchlings.
“You know you’re getting a product that meets the right specs for providing a good habitat,” says Prysby. “You don’t want to be attracting animals to something that’s not a safe artificial habitat for them.”
“He’s a remarkable guy,” says Dunn. “He’s made a very big difference to the VBS.”
Having built more than 2,000 boxes, Walter has, it’s fair to say, made a difference to the bluebird population well beyond Virginia. He rattles off some stats: “Last year there were 41 official VBS trails in Albemarle and Fluvanna counties, and we had a total of 470 some nest boxes on those trails. They produced over 1,600 bluebird babies that successfully fledged and another 1,000 of other species.”
And one more number: Per year, he spends about 400 hours building boxes. No worries about staying certified with VMN: “I’ve got my quota.”
Two years ago, I visited the northeast corner of McIntire Park for the first time, when reporting a story for this paper about the future McIntire Botanical Garden. The reporting was all about potential: the vision of this 8.5-acre piece of land as a place transformed. As the garden’s board and boosters see it, it’s to be designed, planted, tended, and visited.
For some reason, the site has stayed on my mind ever since. I keep thinking and talking about it—how the place intrigues me not just for its potential but for what it already is. I sometimes stop by and walk around there. I stopped by again on a recent sunny day.
Even before I turned onto Melbourne Road to park my car, I realized I was feeling possessive about the place, hoping I’d have it to myself. This thought wouldn’t make much sense in a botanical garden, where the paths are meant to be full of families, strollers, tourists—human eyes to gaze at the human creation. But the FUTURE HOME (as the sign at the corner of Melbourne has it) doesn’t really call to visitors.
I walked around the black gate that keeps out cars and immediately faced a choice: hang right and follow the powerlines, or go downhill on crumbling pavement. On this spot two years ago I attended a ceremony announcing the selection of two landscape architecture firms, who have since collaborated on a schematic plan for the garden. But this time, no one was around.
I walked straight ahead, with the parkway on my left. The site is bounded on north and east by roads, a railroad on the west (with Charlottesville High School just beyond the tracks), and the rest of McIntire Park to the south. A creek cuts through its center. Its other “features” are woods of varying density, apocalyptic drifts of invasive vines, and a network of rough paths.
Right away, I noticed a thick layer of leaves, needles, and shredded branches covering most of the paved road. Was all that material windswept? Carried by water? It seemed to have come mostly from a row of red cedars and pines along the road—the trees seeming intentionally planted, but their droppings making an accidental carpet.
Nearby, two long black metal objects (discarded sections of a bridge or overpass, I guessed) lay side-by-side on the ground, tall weeds arcing over them. I stepped up onto one section and walked its length. Then I kicked a section of green garden hose out from under the duff.
There were little orange flags along a mowed lane. There was continual noise from the parkway. There was the occasional sparrow or titmouse call, and the shiver of the breeze in stiff birch leaves.
Looking for a way to cross the creek, finding no human trails, I found myself following deer paths instead—in their own way, quite well maintained. When I got to the water, I stood opposite a deeply eroded bluff, with two big enticing holes in its surface: a groundhog home. In the sandy mud by the creek, there were deer prints, some other tracks I couldn’t identify, and then—further along—two light, but clear, heron tracks.
I found a place to scale the bank and wandered for a while among poplar and locust trees. Some were marked with white tape—to save, or to cut? Their pattern was unreadable, but I took the white tape as a sign of the garden design, a mark of what’s to come.
In a sunny spot, I found something eerie: a collapsed tent, sleeping bag, and bags of plastic bottles, all moldering into the ground, half-covered with leaves.
Like every other time I’ve been here, I was slightly on edge. It’s no transgression to walk here, it’s a public park, yet it doesn’t ask to be occupied. I know that botanical garden supporters and volunteers come here in groups to remove invasive species, which are rampant, and to attend bird walks and workshops. Still, my own presence felt illicit.
A Norfolk Southern freight train lumbered past. On the top of the hill, I turned my back on the train and its noise, and looked down over this place, the FUTURE HOME: the fall and rise of the land, bone-colored sycamore trunks, ruins of pokeweed. Someday, this will be a center for beauty, order, intention.
For now, it reflects no design sensibility. Nonetheless, it’s a human creation, the accidental result of our actions, our mistakes and neglect. And mixed with all that, there’s the persistence of living things: mosses, woodpeckers, and even sometimes people, who make this place a home.
But no one else was here. I was alone with a stand of very tall, brittle grasses, straw-colored for the winter season, clicking and ticking as they swayed in the wind. Actually, the noise was surprisingly loud. Was I hearing an insect? Seed pods bursting open in the sun? Or just hollow stems resonating as they collided with each other?
I stood there with that humble mystery for a while. It was something no one had planned.
