Recently I’ve been spending considerable time over at the Elora Centre For The Arts. For those who are not familiar with the location, it is the big old stone schoolhouse building that squats on the corner of Mill and Melville Street. I can’t recollect how it happened, I could have been brutally beaten, had my arm twisted, or perhaps just put my hand up to scratch my head, but nevertheless, I ended up on the shovel end of the landscape committee.
Why anyone, right minded or otherwise, would volunteer to tackle such an undertaking I have no idea, but I’m using the excuse that I was totally under the influence and persistent coaching of my Little Lady. Though always comfortably behind the scenes, she approached anything and everything with the idea that nothing was impossible, and it could be a challenge, and it could be fun. She was right about the challenge, and I’m not too sure, right now, that she was not also right about the fun. It seems that I’ve become addicted to the place.
The yard itself, is just slightly short of two acres of land. It was originally levelled with rubble as fill, and covered with a clay loam soil that was packed harder than the continually patched, repatched, and patched again pavement of surrounding streets. Being a retired schoolhouse, it was under the onslaught, which continued over the years, of hundreds and hundreds of tiny dancing and prancing feet. The rubble greeted us when we started planting; my addiction, the many, many trees. But determination on the Little Lady’s part, stubbornness on mine, and the continued help of many, many volunteers over the past six years, have won out. Things are beginning to take shape and its starting to look good.
The yard is circled, on greater than three sides with a gawd-awful looking chainlink fence, which is customarily put around school yards as a safety measure. It amply kept bouncing balls and chasing kids from running out into the traffic. In addition, in the north corner, there was a high-rise ball park screen at the catcher’s tip of the original ball diamond. Hideous, horrible, removal, were the original suggestions. But having a no-dollar budget put the clamps on immediately so doing.
The “No problem. Make do with what you got” was suggested by the Little Lady. Having wayback recollections of the same being said on our wedding night, which worked out quite well for 52 years, I decided to listen. She suggested that we, “make it a vertical garden.” So garden it was, and over the next three years, 6,000 daffodil bulbs, through donations, concentrated fundraising, and the help of international exchange students, were planted along the entire base of the fence. These have since been interplanted with purple cone flowers, liatris, and brown-eyed-Susan. And the fence is now being draped with many assorted vines. It is fast becoming a thing of beauty and a little more pleasant to look at.
In addition to that, just short of 80 quite large, assorted, future shade trees were planted. Then, in addition, six half circles of cedar hedging were randomly placed, their open side in different directions, allowing separation, and privacy to smaller groups working on different projects at the same time. Those cedars are now reaching head height and are soon to be trimmed to maintain that level.
In order to build up the poor quality soil, over 3,000 large white pails of aged horse manure mulch were hauled in from, and courtesy of, Travis Hall Equestrian Stables, east of Fergus, and placed repeatedly, over a four year period, around the trees and on the surrounding gardens. The lawn area itself, other than the fact that it was treated to slow release fertilizer the first year, has been since completely ignored. That is possible because we cut the grass with a mower that mulches, leaving the fine cut grass where it falls, in order to build up the soil. What comes out of the soil goes right back in. Natures way of recycling.
In addition we have over-seeded the main open area with white Dutch clover. It is deep rooted, withstands drought, and brings up nutrients from the subsoils. Take a boo, too, at the new, just planted butterfly garden in the east corner, where the jumping sand pit used to be.
Take care, ’cause we care.