Continuing the legacy of Granny’s Dundas garden

There are so many ways to tell Sharon Washington's story: growing up in Dundas; her life as a singer-songwriter and her Toronto years onstage and off in the Queen Street clubs; her career as a graphic designer; the fall down her basement steps that left her with life-changing injuries.

But the story that hooked me was how she bought her grandmother's house some 26 years ago - a house she had grown up visiting - and how she has grown and expanded the garden that Granny" started in 1941. Four generations have lived at the little Bond Street house: Her great-grandmother lived there for a while when her grandparents owned it, her father grew up there - and now it is hers.

The house has a magnificent 75-year-old Siberian crabapple tree in the middle of what was the front lawn. Granny, a.k.a. Doris Winifred Washington, was given the little tree by a neighbour, Mrs. Brown, in 1948. There's also a tree peony that Doris got from one of the brass at the Royal Botanical Gardens (from his private stock). The boxwoods on either side of the front steps (more on them in a moment) were part of Granny's garden, too.

I think of Granny all the time," Sharon says. Every time I'm in the garden, she's there." The garden has become a memory place for Sharon: snapdragons grow every summer for her late father; pink hydrangeas from the garden of a much-loved aunt.

The crab attracts attention - and comments - in all seasons. Around Christmas, coloured floodlights illuminate its dramatic spreading limbs. In the spring, the magenta flowers are a sight to behold.

Scotty Bakalar, her partner in life, music and the garden since 2016, is a bred-in-the-bone gardener. His grandfather was estate gardener for the Auchmar estate when the Young family owned it and his grandparents lived in the Auchmar Gatehouse. His mother is a florist. It's in my blood," Scotty says. He is deeply invested in the garden. There's so much family history in this place."

The tree is the centrepiece," Sharon adds. The tree needs, as the elderly often do, a fair amount of care. It gets sprayed every year (Sharon hates the idea of spraying chemicals, so insists that the lawn signs about the spray include the words To save the tree.") It's been pruned and medicated and Sharon has found an arborist who not only seems to love the tree but thinks it's healthy - for its age.

Sharon moved to Westdale in 1997, shortly after her grandmother died. I was looking for a place in Toronto. I was a freelance graphic designer and everything was too expensive for me." Her father suggested she buy her grandmother's house - and the deal was done.

Granny had gardened, but in the back, as was considered proper in her time. She had raspberry canes and huge delphiniums." Her grandfather planted a Norway maple behind the house and when someone told him it was too close to the house, he opined that by the time the tree got big, it won't be our problem." Little did he know ... Sharon had the maple taken down two years ago; the back yard remains a work in progress.

But Sharon started making flower beds in the front not long after she moved in. Her mother is an enthusiastic gardener and she helped (as did her dad) as Sharon hauled out yards and yards of grass, made beds, and filled her unused driveway (she doesn't drive) with containers overflowing with flowers. I left enough grass to frame the beds and the tree. The shape of the grass becomes part of the design element." She won Trillium awards for her efforts.

She still wrote songs, performed and played backup. In 2014, at a guitar-a-thon" in Port Dover, she met Scotty. A year later they were in a relationship.

In January 2016, Sharon was about to carry laundry down her basement stairs when she lost her footing. She twisted in mid-air as she fell and landed on her back. I didn't know I had life-changing injuries. But I knew I had to get up the stairs." She did, somehow, and called 911 and texted Scotty.

She had broken her back in several places, as well as her pelvis and other bones. She was in hospital for seven days, then in a hospital bed at home for five months. I spent two-and-a-half years with a broken spine."

Not broken. Shattered," Scotty interjects.

She couldn't think about gardening. Scotty picked up in the garden where I left off," she says.

Scotty says assuming garden duties was intimidating. When I took over the garden, I was terrified to move anything. She is very particular. But then it got to be, I will do what I think needs to be done.' And Sharon had veto power."

Many surgeries and nine years later, Sharon uses a cane and can't hold a guitar for any length of time. The mobility limitations she lives with now are not going to go away. But she has gradually worked her way back into the garden.

Last year, Sharon and Scotty tackled an almost-total makeover in the garden. To make room for repairs to a crumbling porch and new steps and front walk meant emptying several beds and moving other plants. After the workers left, Sharon and Scotty renewed the beds with new topsoil, replanted, moved other things around, and Scotty put in a pathway from the steps across to the driveway.

But the garden is still all about the crabapple. This tree must outlive me," Sharon says. I can't lose this tree. It is so connected to this property and my family history."

The days we talked, snowdrops were in bloom around the old tree and throughout the beds.

Those are Granny's snowdrops, too," Sharon says. I've lifted them and split them and planted them all around the garden. But they are all hers."

Rob Howard lives and gardens in Hamilton. He's a garden writer, speaker and garden coach. You can reach him at gardenwriterrob@gmail.com or on Facebook at Rob Howard: Garden Writer.