The Garden Of Bud and Linda Adlams, Huttonville Ontario

The front yard of Bud and Linda Adlam's garden is proof positive that you don't need a large space to have a pretty front garden. This is their tiny garden, which we shot last summer.

Yellow and orange calendula with pink sedum in the foreground.

Morning Glories on the split-rail fence. 

Orange Daylilies and a whimsical set of signs.

An old apple ladder becomes a plant hanger.

A yard sale toy creates a charming planter.

Linda keeps herbs in pots right by the back door.

The garden is visited by lots of local wildlife including a family of brown bunnies. When we visited the garden at dusk, there was two rabbits just hanging out in the yard. Here one of the visitors munches happily on an apple.

Bud and Linda have numerous feeders which attract woodpeckers, blue jays, cardinals and many other types of birds.

The chipmunks are so tame that Bud often hand feeds them.

The Garden of Glass Artist Hillary Kent, Huttonville Ontario

Hillary Kent  discovered her passion for working with glass when she was selected for an apprenticeship at Sheridan College. Then for a number of years she ran Red Hill Art Glass Studio a small shop in Streetsville, Ontario, which did work on commission, offered classes and sold glass supplies to hobbyists. Then three years ago, she closed the business hoping to devote more time to her own work (though she still teaches occasional classes).

When Hillary saw the towering maple tree in the backyard of an older home for sale in Huttonville, Ontario, she was sold on the place, without even seeing the inside of the house. Built in the early part of the last century, the house had remained in the ownership of one family for many years. Though small, it had a roomy front porch and plenty of character.

When she moved in, there was little in the back garden except the tall maple. Slowly, over the last twenty years she has managed to create a very unique garden.

Hillary's Spirea is spectacular in spring

Hillary is not one to simply yank something out of her garden because it didn't come with a fancy plastic nursery identification tag. When some unexpected plant pops up in the garden, she gives the interloper a chance to impress her first.

She is not one to be tempted into to spending tons of money on the latest echinacea incarnations. On the contrary, she is resourceful and finds bargains at nursery clearance sales or takes cuttings from friends and neighbors. 

Hillary is also way less up tight about her garden, than I am about mine. Sometimes when I am out stressing over the latest crop of weeds in my own garden, I often question my own sanity when it crosses my mind that her backyard next door looks every bit as nice as mine, with half the grey hairs!

Hillary has a love/hate relationship with her Boston Ivy. While it looks great and provides the front porch some privacy, it grows so rampantly that it often threatens to smother nearby shrubs with a covering of vines. You can often find Hillary in her garden mid-summer tugging at the Boston Ivy and cutting the vines back to rein it in.

Colorado the cat guards the front steps.

In the front garden, an unknown variety of clematis covers a twig arbor.

A Globe Thistle from the side garden.

The pompoms of soft lime colored flowers of an Annabelle Hydrangea at the end of June.

A vintage sign marks the entrance to the back yard. 

Bee Balm is a magnet for hummingbirds. Hillary laughs and says she would love to pull up and comfortable chair and watch hummingbirds visit the flowers all day.

A double decker flower.

Hillary scatters found objects that she has collected from flea markets and garage sales throughout the garden. These special objects reveal themselves as you stroll through the yard. Here an old candle stick finds a home in a bed of goutweed. (Gardener's note: If you have a place where you can control the spread of goutweed, it can look nice. If not, don't plant goutweed!)

When the warmer seasons have passed, the garden's object's continue to add interest throughout the cold winter months. Here whimsy plays a hand in the artful combination of an old birdcage and a gargoyle.

An antique Humane Society collection box decorates the front porch. 

My favorite of Hillary's garden ornaments is this weathered statue of St Francis, patron saint of animals. Standing resolutely under the maple that first attracted her to the property, he keeps watch over the garden and the birds that visit it.

First Tasks: Burying the Dead

It did not take long for us to realize just what we had bought into. The house’s unique quirks quickly became serious problems impossible to glibly dismiss.

The staircase to the basement was very narrow, making it next to impossible to move appliances in our out; an impediment made clearer to us by the basement graveyard we discovered on moving day. There were 7 dead appliances; big, cold hunks of metal, including a huge washer/dryer tower and one defunct oil furnace, all of which had been abandoned and left to rust.

We found in the damp recesses of the basement not only the unusual feature of an open well, there was also a door that opened up under the back porch with literately no visible means of exit to the outside.

Neither the house or the original builder could not be held responsible for this dilemma. It was the succession of homeowners who over the years had created the difficulty. Each new owner left their mark on the house by way of “home improvements.” In the case history of the door to nowhere, someone at some point, decided the house needed a back porch. Now, to be fair in laying blame, this homeowner considered the need for providing an occasional exit from the basement and created a prevision for this by making it possible to lift the porch decking to gain access the basement door. This was an awkward plan, but workable. A later resident however overruled his predecessor’s considerations with the installation of an overhead arbor that made it impossible to lift the decking.

If we wanted the dead appliances out of the basement, we had no choice but to cut a new “door” in the back porch floor. My husband Harold and our son Daniel then used a rope and pulley to hoist the old appliances up the five or six feet onto the porch and then dragged them out to the curb.