A garden deserving of the title ‘AUGUSTA NORTH’
EVEN GOLF FANS WOULD ADMIRE THIS STONEY CREEK LABOUR OF LOVE
GOLFERS AND THOSE ADDICTED to the annual Masters Golf Tournament (including this writer) get the reference in the nickname for Dave and Laurie Long’s garden: Augusta North.
The turf (i.e. lawn) is pretty darn close to perfect. The sinuous, gracefully curving edges around the flower beds and borders are even closer. Courtesy of a much-admired, well-used power edger, the lines between sod and flora set the tone for the whole of their Stoney Creek labour of love. And they do look a lot like the azalea-filled borders along Augusta National Golf Club’s fairways.
The Longs’ property is a wide corner lot with drainage ditches instead of sidewalks. A visitor gets a strong sense of the pride they take in their property when noticing that the ditches are lined with mown grass and the culverts veiled by flower plantings.
Very little of their garden is what anyone could call a happy accident. They start planning every February, deciding on the colour scheme for the season to come. Last year, appropriately for Canada’s 150th birthday, red and white were the colours; this year, it’s soft yellow and purple shading into lavender. That’s not just their bedding plants, mind you; it’s the planters and their garden accessories and furnishings. Dave starts painting before the snow is off the garden. They’re both avid plant-lovers.
“I love hostas and (ornamental) grasses. They’re my favourites,” Laurie says. “Dave likes native plants.”
Indeed he does.
“I think gardening is an introduction to people, to communicating.” DAVE LONG
“I have 24 trilliums here,” he says, gesturing at the wide border to the left of the front door. “Two red, two yellow, two pink and the rest are white. And the Jack-in-the-pulpit. I like that.”
Laurie’s hostas are interplanted with a mix of other herbaceous perennials. Some of her grasses are, too, but the two most dramatic displays are a virtual hedge of green-and-yellow porcupine grass along one side of the property and, on either side of the front path, a border of scarlet-tinged Japanese blood grass.
Ferns also thrive here in the dappled shade of a massive Ginkgo biloba tree, with its distinctive fanshaped leaves. It was planted in May 1957 (Dave has the documentation), and he says it is one of just two mature ginkgos in Stoney Creek — and the largest.
Under a canopy of the trees, they have made a smallish kidney-shaped bed filled with succulents growing on rocks and some small annuals. They decided the north-south orientation didn’t work, so “rotated” it to an eastwest axis. Dave carefully lifted, moved and replaced sod so that a visitor could hardly tell without peering closely.
Dave and Laurie’s attention to detail is remarkable, and has earned them a mittful of Trillium civic beautification awards, a steady stream of compliments from passersby and more than 70 visitors when they shared their garden during Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week.
“I think gardening is an introduction to people, to communicating,” Dave says. “You talk to people as they walk by. We like the compliments and the accolades but we don’t do it for that.”
The back garden includes a lovely patio area: Jamaica is a favourite holiday spot and colours, souvenirs, bamboo fence poles and appropriate signage give their outdoor spot a distinct island theme.
Dave is a retired detective; Laurie is the “household CEO” to whom Dave admiringly defers on matters of house, garden and family. They have been in this house for nine years and were previously in a condominium building. It was Laurie’s idea, it seems, to move “back” into a house so they had room for children and grandchildren to visit and stay.
“We started our garden with a clean slate. There was very little here,” Laurie says. “We both love this.”
Dave is just in a gardening place in his life now.
“I like it for the peace of mind. It’s therapeutic,” he says. “I did fishing. I did classic cars. Now it’s gardening.”
Rob Howard is a garden writer, speaker and garden coach who lives and gardens in Hamilton. Find him on Facebook at Rob Howard: Garden Writer, or email him at gardenwriter@bell.net Special to The Hamilton Spectator