This time of year, the riotous garden at 1012 W. Cabarrus Street is starting to come alive.
Clumps of white and yellow daffodils are in bloom; so too yellow flowering turnips. Look closely and you’ll see the green shoots of countless poppies emerging pell-mell throughout the plant-crowded yard. The pencil-like projections of horsetails poke up inches on their climb to heights of six feet. There are burgundy bearded iris, flowering quince bushes, a fading camellia and a Chinese redbud that seems to anchor the wild mix.
Ray Lanier’s garden is an unpredictable blend of textures, shades, sizes and shapes. And it’s only April.
Come June and July, the poppies will be ablaze in red. Blue delphiniums will bloom. Lanier’s towering crepe myrtle – once home to 15 chickens before a former neighbor complained – will be awash in delicate white blossoms. Massive orange, white and pink flowers will hang like trumpets from his brugmansia.
“Ray’s yard is like Disneyland for gardeners,” said Julie Young, a Boylan Heights resident who dropped by Lanier’s house recently while walking her dog. “It’s got one of everything… It’s like a tapestry.”
Lanier, a trained horticulturist, has called the neighborhood home since 1978 when he rented an $80 a month apartment at 609 S. Boylan. He bought his distinctive cedar-shingled bungalow in March 1983 (from Bess Roberts, whom Lanier calls the only Western Union lady in Raleigh) and set about tending the garden almost immediately.
It’s unlike most others in the neighborhood. The haphazard approach he embraces appeals to many Boylan Heights residents including Young. She enjoys the element of surprise the garden provides with its stunning diversity of plants. “It’s like Noah’s ark,” she said
Lanier describes it as “undesigned and free.”
“I don’t like strict design in the garden,” he said.
Lanier prefers the sometimes overgrown look of Boylan Heights to the more robotic yards found in the suburbs. “I like it because it’s not new,” he said. “It’s not flattened land.”
A one-time president of the Boylan Heights Association and a long-time garden club member, Lanier has set about cataloguing the neighborhood’s collection of camellias. This spring he photographed the shrubs in bloom throughout Boylan Heights and he plans to share the photographs with a noted gardener from the Wake County Extension Service.
“We have the most wonderful collection of camellias but we don’t know it,” he said. “We have mature shrubs that take years and years and years to grow. That’s why this neighborhood is so comforting to drive into.
“They’re one of my favorite plants in the neighborhood,” he said.
His top plant pick, though, is Queen Anne’s lace, what he dubs a “summertime wonder.” Don’t dare to call it a weed in his presence.
Lanier, 53, was born in Angier and spent most of his childhood in St. Petersburg, Florida. His family worked in the motel business, and Lanier remembers the quarter tips he used to get from renters from New York and New Jersey.
Throughout his life, he has managed grocery stores, worked as a florist at Fallons and delivered newspapers for the News & Observer. His most recent hobby, acquired about four years ago, is trading on the stock market. He has two computers set up at home: one to study stocks, the other to buy and sell.
“That’s my great love,” he said. “Wall Street’s the most exciting place in the world.”
Another little known fact about Lanier: he used to play in an eight-member accordion band that performed at conventions and concerts in Florida.
Lanier moved to the neighborhood when many of the original owners were just starting to leave, but they made a lasting impression. He still remembers Ida Rhodes of Cutler Street who would greet him at 3:30 a.m. when he delivered the paper with his dog, Rumpole, at his side.
“I appreciate the changes of Boylan Heights but I do miss the blue-haired ladies who would bake you pies,” he said. “I miss that older part… I think they were more concerned with how you were doing in life than what you were in life. That didn’t really matter.”
Lanier now shares his home with two rescue pets: Gordon, a mixed lab who was covered with fleas and scared of everything when he first came to Boylan Heights, and Molly, a grey and white cat taken from an abusive home in Maryland. Both animals are thriving in Lanier’s care.
Lanier, a trained horticulturist, has called the neighborhood home since 1978 when he rented an $80 a month apartment at 609 S. Boylan. He bought his distinctive cedar-shingled bungalow in March 1983 (from Bess Roberts, whom Lanier calls the only Western Union lady in Raleigh) and set about tending the garden almost immediately.
“We have the most wonderful collection of camellias but we don’t know it,” he said. “We have mature shrubs that take years and years and years to grow. That’s why this neighborhood is so comforting to drive into. 
“I appreciate the changes of Boylan Heights but I do miss the blue-haired ladies who would bake you pies,” he said. “I miss that older part… I think they were more concerned with how you were doing in life than what you were in life. That didn’t really matter.”