Valerie Settle considers herself an artistic person, and that interest carries over to her gardening. After purchasing an Amish-made wooden storage barn, she poured her creativity into transforming it into a backyard getaway. “It started as a stress reliever and grew into something I made with passion,” she says. “It’s my way to reset and cope.”
A 2007 art graduate from Kentucky’s Morehead State University, Settle has created ceramics under the name Muddepuddle Pottery. The Phelps, Kentucky, native also took after her mother, Linda Stacy, and sister, Jeannie Dotson, in her love for gardening. With the deaths of her father, Johnny Stacy, in 2012 and her mother in 2017, Settle and her husband, Greg, relocated to his hometown in 2018. When not working as a District Human Resources Leader for Kroger, she gardens around her Newburgh home, around which she planted ferns, sunflowers, and calla lilies.
In September 2025, Greg got her that storage barn. Settle got to work filling it with plants purchased from Colonial Classics Landscape & Nursery. She often incorporates native plants, but there also are vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes, coneflowers, coral bells, hydrangeas, bugleweed, marigolds, small ferns, and a baby herb garden with purple and green basil. She plants and decorates everything herself, but Greg helps with some of the work, such as watering the plants.
Decor in wood, metals, and ceramics was selected with the mindset of hygge, a Danish word referring to the coziness of life’s simple pleasures. The greenhouse is cooled with an exhaust fan, while curtains and open windows provide a breeze. After a lengthy discussion with her sister, Settle decided to call the garden Ferns & Fairy Lights, a tribute to her mother’s affection for ferns and her own love of whimsy.
“You get to define what makes you feel cozy,” Settle says. “I wanted it to be a space to enjoy. I am out here every day, even if it’s just to go out there and look at it.”
Garden beds and Dutch doors she handmade provide a fancy entrance to the greenhouse. Using thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace, she found different antiques to decorate with. She repurposed a candleholder to house small potted plants and surrounded it with a chandelier, dressers, shelves, desks, terracotta pots, wooden windowboxes, and a fireplace mantel with more planters and pots. Inside a wooden frame are the introductory lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” her mother’s favorite song. A sign reads “It’s a Wonderful Life,” nodding at her mother’s favorite movie. Twinkling from string lights helps the space feel whimsical at night. Small chairs offer places to sit and reflect.
Documenting her creation journey on TikTok has gained Settle nearly 9,300 followers. “The garden I’ve created gives me that connection to beauty and peace, and a creative outlet,” she says.
