The kitchen is where Kathryn Greeley prepares treats alongside her trusty companion, Duncan MacDuff. photograph by Tim Robison

Kathryn Greeley knows that the eccentricities she allows in her Chestnut Cottage would drive most of her interior design clients crazy. Like the 1924 kitchen windows that can only be opened from the outside. Or the holes that her friends’ dogs chewed in a few of her Oriental rugs. “That’s just part of the history of living here,” she says. “I like that it looks lived-in.”

In every season, Greeley’s design motto — “collected, not decorated” — is on full display at Chestnut Cottage. Here, in the rolling hills of Waynesville, her English country-style home and meandering gardens are filled with collections that reflect a life of beauty.

Greeley kept many of her home’s original design elements, including the wormy chestnut paneling in the living room. photograph by Tim Robison

“Should we have champagne or hot tea?” Greeley asks. She pulls a tray of freshly baked scones out of the oven and arranges a few on a three-tiered serving platter alongside egg salad sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, and English shortbread cookies. “Or we could just start with a little glass of champagne!”

Tray in hand, Greeley makes her way to the living room, her West Highland terrier, Duncan MacDuff, tip-tapping alongside her feet. She places the tray on an Irish drop-leaf side table, and Duncan hops up on the ottoman next to her. “This is my favorite room of the house,” she says, settling into the leather Chesterfield sofa. “It’s so cozy.”

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When Greeley first walked into this room almost 40 years ago, the walls were black from cigarette smoke, and the windows were draped with heavy red velvet curtains. “I came in and I said, ‘I love it. It has soul.’”

Back then, Greeley was a single, self-employed interior designer. She bought 15 gallons of Murphy Oil Soap and washed the walls until the original wormy chestnut paneling shone through. The wood covered every surface — doors, walls, ceiling, even the trim. The first and only other owner of the home was a forester for Champion Fibre Company. “In the early 1900s, all the American chestnut trees in the Eastern U.S. got a blight and died,” Greeley says. “I presume that Mr. Miller, who built this house, used that so-called junk wood.”

Kathryn Greeley painted her kitchen white to highlight her blue-and-white china collection. photograph by Tim Robison

Greeley figures that Miller must have run out of wormy chestnut by the time he got to the kitchen, where the rustic paneling gives way to tongue-and-groove pine. “I painted the entire kitchen white, which I thought was a nice contrast with the warm chestnut wood,” she says, adding that it’s also an ideal backdrop for her blue-and-white china collection.

“It’s a lot of real collectible stuff, and some not so much. [The pieces] all make me think of where I’ve been. One of my clients brought me this blue-and-white cow from Chicago years ago,” she says. “And I begged a bartender in York, England, for this mini gin dispenser. I used my best Southern voice — I think he couldn’t understand what I said, so he just gave it to me!”

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As an interior designer, Greeley knows how to help her clients unlock their passions — and how to make their homes an expression of the things they love. She understands this because the collections on display at Chestnut Cottage reveal her own passions. “Everything you see has meaning,” she says.

Above the headboard in her bedroom, Greeley displays delicate metal botanicals that she commissioned from Chapel Hill artist Tommy Mitchell: foxgloves, delphiniums, hollyhocks, lilacs, and peonies — a few of the exquisite spring and summertime blooms also found in her garden.

Along the hallway leading to her bedroom, a gallery of framed menus from around the world serves as a daily reminder to Greeley and her husband, Wells, of their favorite passion — travel. “Every time I walk through, I think of our visits to The Little Nell on Colorado ski trips, and eating at Reads in Majorca, Spain.”

Greeley kept many of her home’s original design elements, including the 1924 kitchen windows. photograph by Tim Robison

Trips to England inspired Greeley’s love of gardening. In the summer, blue-and-white vases positioned in every room spill over with dahlias, hydrangeas, coneflowers, and iridescent blue thistle.

And in the winter, when she cozies up by the fire in her living room, Greeley is surrounded by works that she’s collected from local artists over the years. Hanging over the mantel is one of her favorites, an original painting by Asheville artist Bee Sieburg of the Irish village where Sieburg’s grandfather grew up.

Under Greeley’s design, Chestnut Cottage reveals that there are more than four seasons for those willing to experience them. There’s a season for champagne and scones, and one for hot tea by the fireplace. There’s a season for watching the flowers unfold, and one in which the earth’s colors hold fast in painted treasures on the wall. There’s a season for laughter around the dining room table, and one for curling up with a book. When Greeley renovated Chestnut Cottage, she made a place for all of these seasons, a place that opens the door for everyone who wants to enjoy them with her.