A botanist and landscape architect has invested her knowledge in a farmhouse retreat near the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia, an ecosystem she values among the world’s most precious.
Accommodations at Pamela Bailey's Five Springs Farm invite guests to immerse themselves in a peaceful environment in which light and air are plentiful and the clutter of modern life has been abated.
“My mission was to restore the house and open it to admit as much light and air as possible," Bailey said of the farm's guesthouse, which is already welcoming clients.
“Integral to the design, it was decorated with simple practicality—calming and authentic, considering the time and place in which the farmhouse was built.”
Possibly built in the mid- to late 1800s, the two-bedroom house incorporates locally milled lumber, now brightly painted. Farm implements and period home furnishings are employed sparingly, evoking the practicality of the age.
Bailey was first introduced to the region in 1991 when she was employed by the National Park Service as a landscape architect for the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. She fell in love with the land, which is more rugged than the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, where she was raised.
There, in Stockbridge, she was exposed to the ornate and high-style gardens for which the historic New England town was known, and those early experiences informed her ideas about the architecture of landscapes.
Later, while with the park service, she learned to love the process of preservation and the restoration of gardens, buildings, and landscapes.
But, she says, the beauty of central Appalachia won her heart and led her to return to school to study botany, after which she worked as a research botanist in a federal laboratory in Mississippi. Last April she retired and returned to the farm she purchased while working for the park service.
“This is the richest temperate forest in the world,” Bailey said of the mountains she now calls home. “No other temperate forest is as diverse as that of central Appalachia.”
The guesthouse is the only Airbnb.com property located on a working farm in the Fayetteville area, she said.
Bailey is working full time on the farm, which includes horses, a small herd of beef cattle, chickens, and a high tunnel and gardens for herbs, flowers, and vegetables.
She says her vision is to create a sustainable small farm based on stewardship practices grounded in a reverence for the land and its resources, growing wholesome food and providing a farm-stay experience to share this way of life with others.
More information on Five Springs Farm Guesthouse and farm stay facilities are available at AirBnB.com.
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