The artist stands on the crest of his masterpiece, surveying his creation.

His canvas is the 26 acres of Arborcrest Gardens, a nonprofit botanical research garden of such preposterous beauty, you can’t quite believe it’s tucked on the edge of downtown Boone, so quietly, so perfectly folded into the landscape that even many locals don’t know that it’s here. His palette is purple asters and golden chrysanthemums, silvery-green blue spruce and blazing red Japanese maples. His careful brushstrokes lace these High Country hillsides with looping trails and dot them with splashes of brilliant color.

Many years before the Stanleys moved to Boone in 1976, their property at the base of Howard’s Knob was logged and later used as a cow pasture. photograph by Derek Diluzio

Over a series of steep slopes and swampy wetlands, Dr. Ron Stanley and his wife, Cheryl, have created an oasis as gorgeous as it is useful. What started as a hobby vegetable garden decades ago has grown, sprawled, and been loved into one of America’s most beautiful gardens and one of North Carolina’s best-kept secrets. Together, the Stanleys work not in enamels or watercolors but in plants, trees, shrubs — just about anything that grows.

Seeing it all, a visitor can’t help but wonder: How did this come to be?

• • •

Slowly, seems to be the answer. Patiently. Meticulously.

Ron grew up in Kernersville, working tobacco. It was a hard upbringing — there wasn’t a lot of money to spare. But one day when he was 6 years old, his grandmother gave him a piece of her garden, and he fell in love. He became, as he puts it, a “plant nerd.”

Years later, after he and Cheryl met and married in 1969, they traveled to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where they spent their honeymoon seeking beauty in the natural world. They looked for wildflowers along the trails of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At night, they parked at filling stations beneath lights thick with moths.

Ron and Cheryl Stanley are a team: Together, they started Ron’s dermatology practice and have overseen Arborcrest Gardens’ growth from five to 26 acres. photograph by Derek Diluzio

Living in married-student housing at UNC Chapel Hill, where Ron studied dermatology, the two couldn’t resist turning their postage stamp of a front yard into a vegetable garden. Even then, Ron had an eye for detail and a knack for perfection: He’d take a pair of scissors to the little scrap of lawn that remained around their garden, trimming each blade of grass just so.

In 1976, with Ron fresh out of medical school, the couple headed west. They came to Boone because they loved nature. It didn’t hurt that there was no dermatologist in town. They soon bought five acres at the base of Howard’s Knob. They built a house on their property and eventually bought the surrounding land at auction. Given the lush life all around now, it’s hard to believe that this land was first logged and later used as a cow pasture. That was a quieter, greener Boone.

Expressive faces peek out in the Enchanted Forest. photograph by Derek Diluzio

They started a family, and as their three children grew, so did Ron’s dermatology practice. All the while, he was planting, cultivating, learning. In 1984, the garden was one of six featured on the PBS television show Victory Garden. Ron was still working in his office five days a week, taking the kids to soccer practice and dance lessons, but he continued to cultivate the land. In 2009, he hired a staff and built a trail.

“That was the point,” he says, “when the children looked at me and went, ‘Um, Dad?’”

Given the ambition of the project, their response was not unreasonable. Besides the incredible plant life, the trees, the three bridges that span the property, and the “mulch mountain” that the Stanleys’ eight grandchildren now love to climb, there is the scientific mission.

“We aren’t trying to compete with gardens that are purely aesthetic,” Ron explains. Much of Arborcrest is devoted to research, education, and conservation. He and his staff want to know what is hearty, what will thrive here, and what won’t.

As for what won’t, he gives a soft chuckle. “We don’t mind removing something that underperforms,” he says. They don’t mind nurturing rare and endangered species either. Like the fall-blooming Benjamin Franklin trees — now extinct in the wild — with their cream-colored buds that open onto stamens of fiery orange, or the federally endangered swamp pinks that flower in the spring.

Perhaps that’s what is most stunning about Arborcrest: that sense of balance, of careful attention scaled against the wildness of nature. The manicured beds that are allowed to spill. The poplar leaves that, come autumn, fall in buttery golds while the leaves of the “Autumn Fern” full-moon maple appear tipped in flame. The rhododendron placed perfectly so that, in the spring, the dark pink buds and pale pink flowers contrast with the nearby conifers.

Follow the footpaths over the undulating grounds at Arborcrest. photograph by Derek Diluzio

It’s beautiful, and that beauty is all the more impressive given that Arborcrest sits on “mountain land.” Which means that in order to grow, plants must first learn to cling. The garden is a series of hillsides around a narrow valley. It’s steep, but the sheer topography seems fitting: Boone is a vertical place, a mountain town, and to grow something here likely means growing it on a slope. But no matter the angle or even the season, something is always blooming.

Jack-in-the-box planting, Ron calls it: When one thing is down, another is up.

Jack-in-the-box. You can call it that.

You might also call it sublime.

• • •

Though their vision has expanded, the Stanleys have always made a home for the place where the seeds of Ron’s inspiration were first planted: a vegetable garden. It’s as lovely as the surrounding flowers and trees, but what stands out is the exquisite organization — the raised beds, the greenhouse, the intricate system of compost piles. In the fall, the plot yields turnips, carrots, and pumpkins. This is, after all, a working garden, the kind that last year donated 500 pounds of cabbage to the local Hunger and Health Coalition.

More than that, it’s a working garden run by a man who’s been tending the earth since he was a child. As an adult, he’s built a database of more than 15,000 different species and varieties of trees, shrubs, perennials, ground covers, vegetables, fruits, and bulbs. That such a resource is available online speaks to the overlap between Ron’s twin vocations: If part of his role as a physician is to educate his patients, why shouldn’t the same be true for visitors to his garden?

The vegetable garden is meticulously designed and organized, with its seasonal harvest — like pumpkins and squashes — proudly on display. photograph by Derek Diluzio

Things have changed, of course — they always do. The sleepy mountain town that the Stanleys moved to in 1976 is now a destination — less than a five-minute drive from Arborcrest, downtown King Street pulses with energy. What was once a private vegetable garden now has four employees and welcomes 200 visitors for tours every Friday. But change can be a good thing. Green spaces are often described as the lungs of a city. Arborcrest — not so much green as multihued and evolving with the seasons — feels like Boone’s beating heart.

Designed to delight in all seasons, Arborcrest opens to visitors by reservation only on Fridays from March through November. Guided riding tours aboard an electric shuttle last 90 minutes. Self-guided walking tours feature two and a half miles of scenic trails through the garden. For more information or to book a reservation, call (828) 263-3358 or visit arborcrestgardens.org.