From Garden to Ground.
What began as a table set among living gardens has grown into something far greater — a living, breathing ecosystem rooted in the soil of community, creativity, and connection.
LOAM was born from a conviction as simple as it is radical: that the most profound dining experiences happen not within four walls, but under open sky, surrounded by the living world. Founded by Sarah Watkins — a creative with deep roots in both the arts, business, and regenerative design — LOAM began as an immersive outdoor dining experience nestled within curated gardens, where guests could come fully into the present moment through the intimacy of food, nature, and one another.
The name says everything. Loam — that dark, rich, life-giving layer of earth where things grow. Where seeds find purchase. Where the wild and the cultivated exist in quiet reciprocity. From the very first gathering, that was the intention: to create not just a meal, but a return. A slowing down. A remembering of what it feels like to eat with the land, rather than apart from it.
Sarah Watkins — Founder
“LOAM was never just about dining. It was always about what happens when people gather in a living place — the conversations that bloom, the collaborations that take root, the community that grows.”
Sarah Watkins
Founder & Creative Director, LOAM
Sarah Watkins is a multidisciplinary creative and regenerative business leader rooted in Asheville, NC since 2004.
Over a 14-year tenure, she co-built a $250 million insurance organization before returning to her creative roots — launching a celebrated farm-to-table gastropub that ran for eight thriving years. She then turned to painting and design, bringing to life LOAM in 2019, an immersive outdoor dining experience nestled within curated gardens.
While charting LOAM’s next chapter, Sarah was asked to design Terra Nova Brewery in downtown Asheville, where she served as co-owner and Director of Art and Vision. Embedded in the daily life of that community space, she witnessed firsthand the hunger for genuine connection and stability among small business owners, entrepreneurs, and creatives — and the gap that existed in serving it. LOAM’s larger vision came into focus.
Today, Sarah serves as Founder and Creative Director of LOAM — transformed from an intimate garden dining experience into a diversified, biophilic ecosystem of artists, makers, growers, and visionaries, serving as an authentic cultural and economic anchor for Asheville’s creative community.
In Loving Memory of
John A. Kulik
January 22, 1981 — December 20,2025
My brother John embodied everything that LOAM was built to hold — a living ecosystem of creatives, visionaries, makers, and dreamers. He was a rich soul who embodied all of these qualities and so much more.
This one's for you, John.
John was a man full of ideas, with a rare gift for seeing possibility where others saw only the ordinary. A talented visionary, he didn’t just dream things into being — he built them, shaped them, and made them more beautiful than anyone had imagined. He moved through the world with a powerful, effortless confidence, balanced by a humbleness so genuine it drew people to him like gravity. He was magnetic in the truest sense — not because he sought the room, but because the room always found him.
He led by example, always with love and humility above all else. He knew how to make people laugh — really laugh — and how to lift someone’s spirit without making them feel small. He knew how to teach without lecturing, to empower without taking credit, to guide without ever needing to be seen doing it. There was an ease about him that put the world at ease too, that opened hearts without effort and left people feeling more like themselves in his presence.
He was someone I deeply looked up to. A brother in every sense of that word.
Sarah Watkins — Founder
"LOAM is dedicated to him because if he were here, he would pull me aside with that knowing smile and say ‘Sarah, you know what you should do...’ and then proceed to pour out a stream of brilliant, unexpected ideas that would make the vision richer, more alive, and more beautiful than I ever could have imagined on my own. That spirit lives in every corner of this place. "
The 1905 Westall building.
176 E Chestnut Street sits atop Chestnut Hill, a 10-minute stroll north from downtown Asheville — in one of the city's oldest and most architecturally significant neighborhoods. This land was developed during Asheville's first growth spurt in the 1890s, at the same moment George Vanderbilt was constructing his grand estate nearby. Doctors, lawyers, and prominent citizens were filling Chestnut Hill with sizable homes in Craftsman, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival styles. The brick sidewalks and mature trees along these streets are more than a century old.
The building's history isn't incidental to the story. It is the story.
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Built by J.M. Westall for William R. Whitson
Thomas Wolfe's uncle constructed this Grand Colonial Revival home for a local lawyer. It is speculated that Biltmore craftsmen worked on the building — evidenced by carved acorns (a Vanderbilt motif) on the stairway newel posts. The original staircase, with its bowed landing and courting bench at the base, is one of the home's masterpieces. Some of the original fireplaces and light fixtures remain.
A home in the heart of a growing city
Asheville grew rapidly in the early 1900s — a mountain city drawing visitors, artists, and intellectuals. The Westall building, with its pressed brick exterior, tiger's-eye oak woodwork, and ornate mantels, was a pillar of the neighborhood and the Chestnut-Liberty Historic District that surrounds it. Thomas Wolfe and the Whitson family's eldest son were reportedly close friends.
A community of another kind
Historical research has revealed that the building served as a birthing center for unwed mothers during the 1950s and 1960s — a quietly remarkable chapter in its long life as a place of community care and gathering.
Chestnut Street Inn
For decades, the property operated as the Chestnut Street Inn — a celebrated Asheville bed and breakfast that earned inclusion on the Select Registry, received the Griffin Award for historic preservation excellence, and was beloved by guests for its homemade breakfasts, wide porches, and genuine warmth. The inn closed after Hurricane Helene's damage to Asheville in 2025.
LOAM: a new chapter
Sarah Watkins acquires and fully restores the property with a $1,000,000 historic rehabilitation budget. The Westall building becomes LOAM Collective — a permanent community hub for Asheville's makers, growers, writers, and local food producers. A piece of the city's architectural and cultural heritage, restored to active community use.