DAZZLING WATERDOWN GARDEN
Lynn and Otto Hoffmann won a Flamborough Trillium award for their front garden last year. Then, they ripped it all out — hedge, trees, flower beds and lawn — and made a new one.
Between the two gardens, there was the little matter of digging deep underneath the front of their lovely old Waterdown home, jacking it up the few centimetres it had sunk, and installing new concrete support piers to ensure the house would stand safely for another century or so.
The gardens around their home — I use the plural because there are at least three distinct gardens here — are dazzling, belying the fact they’ve only owned the house for about 15 months and have not only completely remade the front, but also created a woodland garden where the driveway used to connect to the former garage/boathouse, and a back garden of two distinct “rooms.”
The Hoffmanns’ garden is one of 22 properties featured on the Waterdown Garden Walk, July 1 and 2 — an event-within-an-event that is part of Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week. The leadership of the Flamborough Horticultural Society has taken the initiative on this, persuading garden owners to open their front, or front and back, gardens to visitors.
All are within walking distance of each other in the old part of the former village. As with the rest of Open Garden Week, it’s all free: just show up and enjoy the gardens on the pretty side streets. (More information on the Waterdown Garden Walk, and maps, will be available at 2 Union St. in Waterdown from 10 a.m. on July 1 and 2.)
The Hoffmanns’ house is an Arts and Crafts style beauty, dating from somewhere between 1910 and 1920. It’s had an addition put on the back and a raised patio (at deck height, but built of brick) with wroughtiron railings, all done in a style to match the original house.
Lynn and Otto have created gardens that, while welcoming and relaxed, use some of the patterns of the Arts and Crafts style to honour the heritage and history of the house.
The front garden is made around a perfect circle of lawn, edged with reclaimed bricks and surrounded by thoughtfully planted flower borders. Large decorative rocks, including one that has water flowing through and over it, bridge the space between the lawn circle and the house; the envy-inducing front veranda is brightened with urns, containers and a hanging basket.
The driveway has been dramatically shortened, and the old section beside the house and into the back garden is a charming green space in its own right. Paper birches, ferns,
hostas and other shade-loving plants are on either side of a path of concrete pavers that look just like weathered timbers. It’s a lovely, restful passage that connects front and back in a way that so many gardens, including my own, fail to do.
“We wanted it to feel woodsy,” Lynn says. They’ve succeeded.
The back gardens are wonderful. Their property is 180 feet deep, so there is room for that raised patio at the back of the house, then steps down to a slightly more formal sitting area with a contemporary, rectangular water feature, then an archway through to a shade garden.
The concept of garden “rooms,” popularized a century ago by English garden writer Vita Sackville-West, is wonderfully illustrated. The different garden spaces are defined by loose boundaries and entrances. Each as its own sitting area (including the front garden’s adjacent veranda), each has its own water feature (although the shade garden’s is not currently running) and each has its own style. A sparing amount of pink annuals are scattered through all the garden rooms and provide a unifying element.
They have used professionals for some of the hardscaping and to put electrical and water lines through the gardens, but the hands-in-the-dirt gardening is all them.
“We’ve put in 250 plants are least this year,” Lynn says.
Otto, she points out, had amended the soil throughout the garden, mixing the native clay in a wheelbarrow with loads of organic matter before returning it to the beds.
“I only started getting interested in gardening in 2010 or so,” she said. “I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve done a lot of learning, of reading. I ask a lot of questions.”
Whatever Lynn and her husband have been doing, it’s working. The garden has a real sense of design along with a truly impressive range of plants. They’ve planted dozens of hostas, “rescued” from a friend’s property undergoing a makeover, in both symmetrical and random groupings. Clematis, hydrangeas of various kinds, day lilies, phlox, astilbe, Kousa (Chinese) dogwood and a variety of small shrubs and trees are the backbone of the garden. There’s wisteria on the garage/boat-storage outbuilding, a magnificent spreading white lilac tree, a Japanese maple by the steps.
The “woodsy” side garden is under the canopy of a neighbour’s black walnut trees, notorious for killing many plants, so Lynn and Otto have chosen plants that seem to survive, even thrive, in the soil there.
“If you can’t beat them,” Lynn says of the walnut trees’ plant-toxic roots and leaves, “you join them.”
There’s much more to these gardens-within-a-garden: Astroturf carpeting on a patio area, distressed wooden pieces in the garden, many more plants.
When a visitor comments that they’ve accomplished a great deal in just 15 months, Lynn writes it off to teamwork. “My husband and I work hard. When we work out here, we get a lot done.
“I don’t know all the plant names but I know what looks good, what looks balanced, what flows. I see room for a lot of improvement, but I guess all gardeners say that.” Yes. They do. Full Open Garden Week listings, including the Waterdown Garden Walk, will be published June 29 in The Spectator and at thespec.com.