When Caroline Grace graduated from high school, she packed her clothes and headed for the city. No more small town life for her, not in Marion, Ky., population 3,200, where the nearest movie house was about 40 miles away in any direction. She was living in Atlanta when she met and married Jean-Claude Kieffer, a native of Luxumbourg and employee of Siemens Netherlands. She shook the dust off her shoes and traveled with her husband throughout Europe. Home was wherever Siemens sent Jean — certainly a world apart from Caroline’s rural Kentucky roots.

Young Caroline never dreamed she would return to the farm where she grew up. Growing cattle, corn, wheat and soybeans was not in her youthful plans. But through the years she maintained strong ties to her roots and today is very happy to call Kentucky home. After the death of her mother 13 years ago, she purchased the 300-acre farm where she grew up and set about restoring the farm house.

As Jean came close to retirement as chief financial officer of Siemens Netherlands, the thought of simple country living became appealing. And after 13 years of commuting between here and Europe, he chose the slower-paced life of a country gentleman, a gentleman with farm chores.
The Kieffers decided to build an addition to the original farmhouse, blending the two structures into a large single unit. Jean completed the design and construction began in 2006. The builders were men from a nearby Amish community. Amish carpenters also made interior finish work, including cabinetry, spacious closets, a stone fireplace and a bar Jean designed.

But before construction began, Caroline called in landscape architect Rich Mitchell of Newburgh, Ind., to design gardens, a lake, a pavilion and a gazebo to transform the farm property into an enchanting setting for their handsome home. And although the design is professional, the Kieffers have done the planting and maintenance themselves.

There is a great deal of natural stone on the property, all of it locally quarried. It was used to build a magnificent fireplace in the great room, to pave the courtyard and lakeside pavilion, and to line a dry creekbed along the road leading to the house. On the warm day Posh visited Caroline, she helped handyman Samuel Yoder lay stone in the creekbed.

Caroline is in charge of the flowers while Jean does the mowing and trimming, making sure that no weeds are allowed to mar the landscape.

As we strolled through the garden areas, Caroline —stooping now and then to pull up a errant weed — identified each plant and flower: astilbe, hydrangeas, St. John’s wort, catnip, hollyhock, and coreopsis, with summer annuals to follow. At the end of the season, these will be replaced by mums and pansies. Herbs — cilantro, basil, thyme, sage, parsley, rosemary and mint — flourish in an herb garden. In winter, the annual herbs are moved into a greenhouse.

“I call it my enchanted garden,” Caroline said, “because I put so much into it with so little loss.” She was referring to the ice storm of last January, when so much plant life and so many trees were destroyed.

The Kieffers’ home was constructed so that windows in each room afforded a view of a garden area.

“When we are inside,” Caroline explained, “we want to feel we are outside.”

To the viewer, the Kieffer garden is magical, but the upkeep is not.

Last spring, Caroline said, “we spread seven truckloads of mulch, and it still wasn’t enough.”