by Jess McCuan
photos by Rebecca D’Angelo

The Chases wanted a house they didn’t have to paint. Sure, covering their new house in bark has had some unexpected side effects: squirrels sometimes mistake the house for a giant tree and scramble up the side (really), and, because the house is so close to downtown Asheville, several people a day stop in the middle of Broad Street to gawk at it. But bark has plenty of other perks. For one, it’s distinctive-looking, says Nan Chase, a freelance journalist who splits time between Asheville and Boone. Second, she co-authored a book called Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs From Nature, to be published this September, and when she and her husband Saul were sketching out plans for the Asheville house last year, she wanted to put all that research into practice. “It’s a good advertisement for itself,” Nan says. “It wasn’t meant to be a statement, but it’s become one.”

Nan has always been interested in architecture. She was born in Ohio, moved around frequently as a child and now travels often. She published Asheville: A History last fall, a book that focuses on the architectural history of the city, especially its downtown buildings. The Chases, who met in high school and went to college in Madison, Wisconsin, intended to settle in Asheville in the ‘80s, after a brief stint in England. But there were few school administration jobs in Asheville for Saul, who eventually found one near Boone. Nan stayed at home in Boone raising three children, but now that her children are grown, she and Saul have more time for the cultural events and nightlife that Asheville has to offer. Nan has also thrown herself into her writing career.

In Spruce Pine, she discovered Chris and Marty McCurry’s company, Highland Craftsmen, which is doing its best to revive the rustic bark house style of home-building, once popular in Appalachia in the 1800s and early 1900s. The bark, often from chestnut trees, was peeled off in large intact sheaths and nailed onto the side of a home. Some original bark-covered homes are still standing in the Linville, North Carolina area.

The McCurrys started making bark shingles out of poplar trees in 1990, and now they sell rustic-looking railings, moldings and split-rail fencing as well. Making shingles out of bark is a good way to make use of what is normally a logging industry by-product, Nan says, which appeals to eco-minded builders. The bark is kiln-dried, which makes it relatively stable (and sterile), but still, bark siding can come complete with woodpecker holes and with traces of poison ivy. The fact that bark is thicker than some other types of siding can make it a good sound insulator, a characteristic Nan appreciates when she works from home in Asheville and needs to drown out street noise from either Broad Street or Charlotte Street. In the bark house, which was completed in February and built on a previously vacant lot, a large second-floor porch also offers her a bit of a refuge from traffic and passers-by. 

While she was busy researching Bark House Style, co-authored with Chris McCurry, Nan was also gathering material for another book, on edible landscapes. She and Saul moved into a home with a large yard in Boone, and over ten years Nan started incorporating edible plants into the landscaping—first more traditional food-producers like apple trees and mint plants, then more unusual ones, like kiwis and yucca. If it sounds like a garden, it is, in a way. Except it isn’t. “It’s the opposite of plain old gardening,” Nan says. “It’s the opposite of tearing out your grass and planting zucchinis.” With edible landscaping, she says, you start with normal lawn grass and some basic principles of traditional landscaping, except instead of boxwoods and rhododendrons, you use well-placed, edible plants. After a bit of research and some experimentation, she’s found that grape vines, pawpaw trees, prickly pear, pomegranate bushes and bay trees all do particularly well in this area. She’s planted all of them in both her Boone lawn and now at her bark house in Asheville. While the plants she uses won’t generally feed a family, they are useful supplements. “It’s like an orchard hidden in plain sight,” she says. Her book about edible landscapes, to be published in 2009, will be equal parts landscape design manual and cookbook.