We Are Ready To Help
Our mission is to work with you to make sure your garden space is healthy and well cared for while we provide information and encouragement.
Our goal is to help you enjoy the potential bounty of your yard to the fullest extent possible.
The Birch Meadow Garden Care team is a mighty group who have been gardening at homes,
teaching gardening, and exploring gardens of all types, all over the world, for most of our lives.
Mary Beth Berkley
Owner
Mary Beth has been messing around with gardens since she could walk. With a grandfather who was a botanist raised in Appalachia by a mother who was the local herbalist and midwife and a grandmother who was a naturalist that enjoyed visiting arboretums, nature trails and botanical gardens, she has absorbed information about plants in every setting from formal gardens to vegetable beds to the wild woods. She has taken courses in botany, land management, permaculture and pruning and has taught classes herself in farming and gardening. She is most interested in raising food plants and maintaining the health of all plants. A healthy plant in a healthy ecological system is a beautiful plant.
Kelley Wiley
Operations Manager / Office Manager / Gardener / Foreman
Kelley fell in love with gardening when she moved to Wilton, NH and had 2 acres of land to work with. Her two sons were her inspiration on learning everything there was for growing our own food, canning, and wine making. Now many years later and living in Hillsborough, NC, she is incredibly happy and lucky to be working with mother nature once again. She draws her inspiration and joy from both her past experiences and working with the other women in this job to help continue our relationship with nature and humans in a healthy way.
Karla Boyce-Awai
Supervisor / Gardener / Designer
Karla Grew up in Trinidad and Tobago where she was influenced by her Mother’s and her Grandmother’s passion for gardening. When Karla moved to the UK at 17 to go to boarding school and university, she had no garden. So she went to the Chelsea Flower Show as often as she could and visited many English gardens and parks and grew some houseplants. She moved to the US 23 years ago where she finally was able to start practicing in her own garden. She currently gardens on 2.8 acres in Hillsborough and keeps chickens and bees. She is constantly reading, volunteering, experimenting, and observing in and about gardens. She is taking classes in horticulture at Alamance Community College. Karla has traveled extensively with her family and always insists on visiting gardens wherever they go. Some highlights include Sissinghurst, The Humble Administrator’s Garden, The Garden of the Master of Nets-Suzhou, The Sydney Botanical Gardens, De Hortus Amsterdam, and Potager de Roi at Versailles. Yes, she was more impressed with the vegetable garden than the actual garden at Versailles. Karla cannot believe that she gets paid to do what she loves!
Jared Wiley
Supervisor / Gardener / Hardscape / Estimator / Tool Fixer
My name is Jared, and I have been with Birch Meadow for quite a few years now. I mostly do the heavy manual labor for our company, especially any of the odd or more difficult jobs like moving heavy objects and cutting down tall or larger plants and a whole lot more. I am also the one who usually handles hardscape design, such as stone or gravel pathways, stone or wood walls around beds, things of that nature. I really enjoy this work, and it’s wonderful to help care for all of our clients’ unique and beautiful gardens!
Ray Chandler
Gardener/Designer
Ray grew up in the Rhododendron forests and winding rivers of western NC, and has lived in Chapel Hill for 12 years with their two dogs, three cats, and soon, a waddling of ducks. After a decade in hospitality, and craving a career change, they studied Horticulture at NCSU on a whim - and fell deeper in love with plants and our natural world. They are passionate about using native species in gardens to support our ecosystems, solving landscape problems with the right plants and low impact techniques, and learning everyday as our climate continues to change. They are certified in rain garden installation under NC's stormwater agent, Mitch Woodward, and trained in garden design with the NC Botanical Garden. In their free time you can find Ray reading, growing herbs, fishing, baking, or cuddling at the bottom of a dog pile.
Lori
Gardener
Lori grew up in South Texas and Virginia, and went to college in North Carolina. After many years in Design and Retail Merchandising, she decided to switch her career path more towards her passion for plants and gardening and went to work at the Chapel HIll Lowes working her way up to Live Nursery Specialist and then the District Live Nursery Trainer and Advisor. She went on to do a year with Witherspoon Rose Culture, then spent over 10 years with Metrolina Greenhouses as a District Manager, then Company Trainer for their in store Service Provider Program throughout the Southeast. After owning and operating a Bed and Breakfast for 17 years in the Chesapeake Bay region where she was also responsible for the many decorative gardens on the property as well as helping with the on-sight large vegetable and cut flower gardens, she moved back to the Chapel Hill area in Jan 2025 and has enjoyed working for Birch Meadow Garden Care as well as taking care of all her perennial and vegetable gardens at her new residence, and learning new sustainable gardening practices and techniques.
Sara Hinchliff
Gardener
Sara spent her childhood outdoors. Swimming in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, chasing the animals around her Uncle’s small farm, and helping her grandmother in her backyard garden. After college Sara and her husband lived in various places around the world with their 3 children in tow, always on the lookout for new outdoor adventures. While overseas Sara completed a Master of Library Science, a degree she sought out of a pure love of learning. After years spent moving from place to place Sara and her family made Chapel Hill home. She now has a space of her own to cultivate and care for where she focuses on incorporating native plants and exploring landscape design through a sustainable lens.
Amy Moss
Gardener / Carpenter
I am a self-taught gardener from way back! Originally from PA, I started learning how to grow vegetables and herbs in the late 80s. Then I focused on the native wildflowers, trees, birds, insects, etc. Since moving to North Carolina, in 2021, my knowledge has expanded to learning landscaping and ornamental gardening in the southern climate. As I work with the fabulous Birch Meadow crew, my love and knowledge for gardening is continuing to blossom.
I am also excited to be using my carpentry skills for designing and building hardscape projects for the Birch Meadows Garden Care company. I had built my tiny house on wheels in PA and moved it to an incredibly lovely spot near Saxapahaw, a community of tiny houses along a beautiful meadows next to Haw Creek.
My favorite thing about my job is being in nature, surrounded by bird songs, the elements, sunshine, clouds and discovering all the insects and plants or creatures living in the soil of the lovely clients, whom we work for beautifying their space.
David
Hardscape Consultant / Designer
I grew up south of Pittsburgh Pa. and moved to North Carolina in the mid-1980s. In the mid-1990s I completed my masters degree in landscape architecture from NCSU school of design. After graduate school I worked with Will Alphin of Alphin Design Build/build (now RE design/build) learning residential carpentry and construction.
In the late 1990s I got married and moved to Chapel Hill. I have worked in the landscape design/build and gardening field for the last 25 years. My skill sets include all aspects of landscape and garden design, carpentry, masonry and anything related to outdoor construction. I have been with Birch Meadow Garden Care since the end of 2025.
Barbara Holloway
Supervisor / Gardener / Designer
Barbara grew up in North Carolina where she spent much of her free time alongside her father in the family vegetable garden, with her mother in the beautiful flower gardens they cultivated together, and in the forests, fields, and streams nearby. Her German relatives were farmers, and she particularly loved climbing cherry trees and picking baskets full of cherries for her Aunt to sell at the corner market. Barbara studied pollinator garden design with Debbie Roos, completed a Permaculture Foundations course at Pickard’s Mountain Eco Institute, has taken numerous design, pruning, and other courses at NC Botanical Garden, has studied biodynamic beekeeping at Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary, is a member of the Orange County Bee Association, and spends every free second she has tending her own vast gardens, which have nourished her and her family for 30 years. She also loves catching bee swarms and tending them. Barbara is also a dedicated conservationist who has worked and volunteered with Go Conscious Earth for over 7 years to empower indigenous tribes in DR Congo to protect 1.2 million acres of some of the most carbon rich and biodiverse land in the world that we all depend upon for global climate stability. She’s also currently forming a new international NGO in Ecuador to support the local, indigenous people there to preserve their sacred virgin rain forest.
Connie’s picture will be added at first opportunity.
Connie Stafford
Gardener
I arrived at outdoor work with plants through interning at a small scale vegetable farm in the mountains of WNC in 2017. Since then I’ve worked in different agricultural settings and have learned a lot. Jumping into garden care and learning more about plants beyond row crops is an exciting recent pivot and I really enjoy doing this work with this team. Learning more, especially with plants, always seems to humble and teach one how much they don’t know and I’m certainly no exception!
Annora’s picture will be added at first opportunity.
Annora Leaf
Gardener/Intern
Annora Leaf is a current high school senior, planning to major in Landscape Architecture at NC State University. Her love for the outdoors started in the garden, and continues to thrive there. She likes to learn new plant facts and spend all of her time in nature.
Dillon’s picture will be added at first opportunity.
Dillon Hinkley
Gardener
Shannon Wiley
Office Gnome, Plant Wrangler, Guy-in-the-chair, Driver
Shannon is a retired Waldorf teacher who mostly spends his time caring for his family and enjoys puttering around his garden and yard between writing attempts. He has been working part time as our Office Assistant, MaryBeth support person, occasional Gopher, and all around Plant Wrangler.