There is one project recently completed by architect Tim Adams in Cashiers, North Carolina, that reads as something plucked from a dream. “The property sits in a beautiful valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains, bordered by national forest on one side, with a pretty meadow that runs down the middle of it,” says Adams, whose clients asked him to craft an idyllic vacation retreat capitalizing on those comprehensive views.
From the beginning, Adams’ wine-collecting clients requested a creative method to store treasured vintages. An ingenious solution emerged as landscape designer Alex Smith was softening the incline of the lot’s topography into a gentle slope, integrating a stone retaining wall to hold back plant material and soil. Everyone agreed on a wonderful opportunity: tucking the cellar directly into this new hillside, complete with an antiqued oval door.
The same indigenous Doggett Mountain fieldstone Adams chose for the main home reappears here on the façade, while native plantings spill over the structure, blending seamlessly with the landscape. “It becomes a found experience, something very personal,” Adams says. The result is a golden-hour retreat where savoring a rare bottle feels even more special, where teak seating can easily whisk onto the pea gravel courtyard for impromptu picnics.
This Cashiers, North Carolina, estate by architect Tim Adams and designer Amanda Wyatt includes an outdoor wine cellar and pair of cabins, each with a different material palette to reflect the destination. Styling by Eleanor Roper.
Continuing threads of connection throughout the compound, Adams again used the same endemic stone on wood-burning fireplaces in two guest cabins guarding the forest and meadow’s edges. “We wanted to create three different experiences, three different languages,” Adams says of this enchanting estate, which is set to be showcased in his upcoming monograph, Tradition Made New: Houses With a Sense of Soul and History (Rizzoli, September 2025). “One cabin feels more of the woods; the other, more of the meadow.”
Meanwhile, interior designer Amanda Wyatt further differentiated the dwellings through thematic touches. The woods cabin is darker and more grounded, while the meadow cabin is brighter and airier, conjuring the European countryside through pale plaster, ivory textiles and botanical motifs. This lighter approach harks back to feminine spaces in the main house, including a guest bedroom dressed in cheery pinks (above, top). “It’s nice to have a space to get away that’s a little bit different,” Wyatt notes. “Much of this project was about moments of contrast, but everything works together.”
The meadow cabin shines thanks to lofty proportions complemented by hand-hewn ceiling beams and soft white plaster. Styling by Eleanor Roper.
Creating points of connection throughout the property was also a priority, so a guest bedroom in the main house reflects a similar femininity. Styling by Eleanor Roper.