I love a tiny house, and Crank’s Roost, former home of author Terence O’Donnell, is one of the most charming I’ve ever seen. We were delighted to become the gardeners there last summer. Current owner Lisa is perhaps more into native landscaping than we are, at least for the back, boggy, naturalistic area which we have been working on …but I know she’ll let us add a few of our favourites, such as hardy fuchsias. (Right, Lisa?)
The more formal area of the garden was designed and implemented by both Lisa and Terrence. I met Terrence at a couple of dinner parties before he died…and he did not seem terribly much like a crank to me. In fact, I am almost sure he was less of a crank than I am. I think he had this small house built…even though it looks so much like a historic house.
After edging of boxwood beds, pruning of hydrangeas and laurels and general weeding, the seating area is ready for a spring tea party.
Due to our enormous wind of early December (not as enormous as two years ago, but bad enough) , Lisa’s newish trees were at a sad tilt. I have a bad feeling that staking them will not cure the problem, but we tried, and we (er, Allan) dug up two and transplanted to a drier slightly uphill area where they will also serve (if they survive) to block the view of a tall modern house. ( At least the vast modern wall does not have windows peering down onto the peaceful Crank’s garden.) It does not inspire confidence to find a tiny, sodden root ball holding up a fifteen foot tree, nor does the old planting hole filling up immediately with water seem a good sign…
We transplanted two of the trees so they will perhaps survive to block that vast grey behemoth of a house; if the trees plotz, we’ll get smaller ones to plant with the same idea.
One of my eventual desires for this large lot would be be get all the dadblasted English ivy out…even out of the wilder unkempt areas. My reasons can be found at noivyleague.com. It’s creeping in around all the edges….so I did tackle a bit of it in this gardening session. (More on this in my next entry.) Another continuing project is to make some paths and patterns of circulation in the wilder areas; we spent most of our work here last year clearing areas of swamp grass and salmonberry.
Especially with moving those two bogged-down trees, we now have some empty spaces to work with our paths and plantings for the wild garden.
Crank’s Roost: some photos to capture the feeling of the place:
And as always, thanks to Allan for always doing the ladder work!
You can plant whatever your heart desires!
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Those words are music to a gardener’s ear 🙂
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They certainly are, and the Basket Case has some excellent hardy fuchsias, including ‘Hawkshead’.
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Go forth and propagate!
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[…] saga of reclaiming the woods at Crank’s Roost in Seaview goes on. I hope I have written about this before. We want to keep the woodsy […]
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[…] continued to care for the lovely green landscape at Cranks’ Roost. Probably because of being preoccupied with our garden tour, we did not clear any further into […]
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