A Retirement Garden

A few years ago OHS members, Steve and Isabel Murphy, decided to acquire a new home that would be easier to maintain. Did this mean that they also wanted a garden that was easier to maintain? You might think so but the reality is they simply changed one set of challenges for another.

Steve and Isabel had lived in their house in Alta Vista for 37 years when they decided to pull up stakes and move to a new house in the Hunt Club area. In Alta Vista, they had lived in a heavily treed neighbourhood and their own garden reflected this. There was a small patch that got enough sun to have tulips and peonies, but it was most truly a shade garden with wildflowers. Steve recollects that it was actually an easy garden to manage with the biggest job being shredding leaves (and neighbours' leaves) in the Fall.

Their new lot was virgin territory for gardening. There was the developer's front yard maple tree and a weeping mulberry but the back and sides were just grass. It was also very sunny which to some might mean easy gardening. But Steve speaks about the new challenges he has had to understand and deal with in this garden.

In particular, it is very exposed to winds which in winter have caused his thermometer to dip well below the temperatures being shown for the local airports. As a result, Steve quickly found that not all cultivars of even cold-tolerant plants are created equal. The proof of this is in the plants zoned hardy for our area but that failed the test in Steve's garden, dying after a single winter in the new garden.

Plus, Steve found that he had exchanged city squirrels for suburban groundhogs. He feels that these groundhogs have been a greater challenge than the squirrels had been. His experience in Alta Vista was that the local squirrels would go for tulips buds of specific colours. If he planted light coloured tulips, he could minimize their predation. But it seems groundhogs are gourmands, not gourmets, and will eat everything in sight without discrimination.

The new garden has also brought opportunity to launch out on new paths. Steve's first job was to build raised gardens across the back of the yard with 4 by 4s and bring in soil to augment the three inches of topsoil over clay that was deemed sufficient by the developer. He then took up vegetable gardening, something he could not do in Alta Vista due to lack of sun. The Murphys now can enjoy stepping outside for fresh beans and such. Steve grows many of his vegetables from seed that he has collected. For instance, his patio tomatoes are a "grape tomato" seed that he collected in Florida.

There are still memories of the old garden in the new. The Murphys moved with them peonies that had been in Isabel's family for many years as well as some small shrubs and an 18" oak seedling. At the same time, Steve has added woody plants and new structures to deal with specific issues in the garden. For
instance, he has put in a linden to cut off a view of hydro towers and built a pergola on the deck, with the cross beams laid at an angle across the top to cut the force of the sun. He uses the pergola to hang plants in summer.

In the nine years since their move Steve has not missed the other garden. In fact, Steve says that he finds his retirement garden enjoyable because of the new challenges it has given him. His advice to others starting a new garden is to first find out how much real soil you have and bring in more if it is not adequate. Then live with your garden and find out what grows well for your conditions. Book descriptions of what's hardy have to be modified by your own
experience.

Examples of perennials Steve found particularly cold tolerant are Phlox, Dianthus, Coreopsis, Oriental Poppy, Gaillardia, Columbine, and Heuchera.

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