Out of Sight

A secret garden feels like a setting plucked straight from the pages of a storybook. Look closely, and you’ll find one in this flourishing Greenville, South Carolina, backyard.

- ELIAS GROUHI,CARSON DOWNING

Notes from the Tour

Landscape designer Dabney Peeples loves to lead garden tours, giving often-overlooked design details their due-like the garden stairs (top), which he claims you'll want to "walk more than once" because of their ideal rise-to-tread ratio.

Variety (left): Lily of the Nile agapanthus.

"We call it the secret garden," landscape designer Dabney Peeples says.

"You go through the 'little' garden, into the stone gardener's cottage, throw open an iron gate, and pop out into a whole other garden with a hidden tunnel that leads into the house."

Dabney has dreamed up havens like this for five decades, alluring spaces as charming as his unmistakably South Carolina accent. He designed this hideaway for his close friends of 30 years, complete with its sprawling secret garden. The couple's Carolina roots are the inspiration behind what feels like a lush love song to Greenville's unique ecology. If one's passion for conservation is the beat, the other's love for cottage and country gardens is the melody.

"They both love the land. They're letting it grow what it grows best," Dabney says.

Many of the flora are native to the area, including rarities such as the Pinckneya, partridge berry, and pawpaw fruit tree.

The homeowners have taken great care to replicate the soil structure, sun, shade, and wind for each genre of plants sourced from natural habitats like the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Carolina coast.