How Much Is A Phone Concultation Oasis Garden Florence Alabama

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In Birmingham, Alabama the residential enclave of Mountain Brook unfolds in a procession of monumental homes, most of them hailing from the 1920s and '30s in a pastiche of English styles. But one house literally stops people in their tracks. Built a little over a decade ago, it's a sublimely proportioned brick Georgian, strict as a sonnet and hemmed with enchanting gardens. People knock on its door to ask for paint colors. And while not quite as popular as Ariana Grande, the house has proved to be somewhat of an Instagram heavyweight.

BRIAN WOODCOCK

This was all a major surprise to Caroline Gidiere, its owner and decorator who, early in the project, surmised to her architect that the whole town would probably whisper, "Why is she building this 'grandma house?' " Building it at all was serendipitous. She and her husband, Stephen, who she met in law school, had been house hunting avidly. One day, she looked at a house so dilapidated the eccentric owner led her in through its only functional opening: a side window. Thinking they'd found an intriguing fixer-upper, the Gidieres snapped it up. Then her architect and friend, James F. Carter, informed her that the half-collapsed pile was a teardown, well beyond saving.

Gidiere, who was still a lawyer at the time (one with unexpressed aesthetic yearnings), didn't bother getting upset. Instead, she told Carter what she wanted him to design in its place.

Brian Woodcock

"I wanted to do a riff on the George Wythe house," says Gidiere, who was raised in tiny Florence, Alabama, by parents who'd taken her to Colonial Williamsburg every summer for 20 years. For at least the first 10, she spent those vacations beating flax into linen, dipping candles over a hot cauldron of beeswax, and envying friends who'd gone to Disney World. But as it turns out, she was also busy storing up house plans, particularly of the majestically simple 1750s house built for Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

"The symmetry and balance of it massages something deep in my brain," says Gidiere, a lifetime decorating devotee whose tastes run from Daniel Romualdez, Frances Elkins, and Renzo Mongiardino to Miles Redd and David Netto. So clear was her vision for the project that she scrapped plans to work with an interior designer and simply forged ahead with Carter on her own.

Gidiere favors timeless, traditional rooms but also exuberant pattern and color. In the foyer, Chinese blue-and-white exportware vases crowd the console. The living room's sofas wear buoyant ruffled slipcovers in Colefax and Fowler's Bowood, a floral document fabric found in England's Bowood Castle. The ruffles fraternize effortlessly with filigreed Kentian consoles and a quieter games table and chairs from the Paris Flea Market. Dining room walls are clad in frothy, hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper, its background a saturated midtone green hovering between grass and olive. It cleverly covers the jib doors of four big closets where Gidiere stores tableware.

VERANDA

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of VERANDA.

Her color palette veers close to the edge but never over it and always to joyous effect. The kitchen and family room's lavender sofa with pale pink and aqua pillows next to a bright orange banquette sounds insane but isn't—and an equally vivid orange silk sari made into a pleated lampshade only amps up the charm. Next to hot-orange millwork, the bar's ultratraditional built-in cabinetry stained chocolate brown surrenders up every iota of stuffiness. So much color supports a truth about this house: that it's a garden indoors and out, each part flowing easily into the other and both well used for entertaining and family life. Stephen worked closely with landscape architect Randy McDaniel to choose plants and has always taken care of everything. He hand-clips the dahlia garden, trains the espaliered hornbeams and fruit trees against the house, and barbers the myrtle topiaries scattered everywhere. "It's his playground and stress reliever," she says.

Brian Woodcock

Gidiere learned in the decorating that she could spend long hours on mundane tasks like choosing hardware and never consider it work. One December, Stephen secretly filed her incorporation, got her a decorating license, and put them in a box under the tree. She opened them up, and he said, "It's time." She took the following year to wrap up her legal practice.

Unsurprisingly, Gidiere has more colorful and engaging work than she can handle these days. "Beyond my wildest dreams!" she says. "I'm blown away and grateful every day."

Interior Design by Caroline Gidiere; Architecture by James F. Carter; Landscape Design by Randy McDaniel; Photography by Brian Woodcock Produced by Rachael Burrow

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