Continuing the development of MapleWalk with the history of:
Property #2
Behind our house was a vacant lot which belonged to the man who lived diagonally in back of us. We had our eye on that lot from day one. Tom sent the neighbor a letter stating our interest in the lot should he ever decide to sell. We never heard a word from him. Our next door neighbor who had lived behind him for 18 years had only seen him once!
One day we heard that the man's daughters were in town. We tried again to connect by writing another letter and taping it to his front door in hopes that one of his daughters would communicate with us. Well, we did hear from someone who happened to be one of his business associates. The long and short of it was that we NEVER spoke with our neighbor, and the ONLY time we ever saw him was at the closing when we purchased the lot. He agreed to sell if we promised never to build on it which was certainly agreeable with us.
This second property was extremely overgrown with English ivy, poison ivy, and wisteria vines as big around as my calf. Because of the overgrowth, the lot had become a dumping ground for construction debris (i.e. concrete, rebar) and the remnants of Hurricane Hugo. We were unable to even walk the lot before purchasing it because we kept falling into holes!
The weekend after the closing, Tom and I began clearing the lot beginning in the upper left corner. We would work all weekend, and realize that no one other than ourselves could tell anything had been done. We were pulling up ivy and wisteria and it was very slow going.
It was winter when we closed on the lot, and unbeknownst to me, the leafless vines I was pulling out of the trees was POISON IVY!! I was looking up into the trees as I pulled down the vines disregarding what was falling back into my face. I'm sure you can imagine what I am going to say now ... I had the WORST case of poison ivy ... even in my eyes! I was a mess!!!
As our clearing continued, we hired a Hispanic crew to work along with us one weekend. I was hauling logs up to the street when Tom heard one of the guys say in reference to me: "She little, but she strong like bull!" I guess that's a compliment. (Tom loves this story!)
Months, and months later, we had cleared enough to be thinking ... now what do we do? Since Ann (our original landscape designer) was no longer available, Tom called Dr. Larry Mellichamp, botany professor and Director of the UNC-Charlotte Botanical Garden (since retired) to ask him for a recommendation of someone to help us with the development of our woodland garden. Tom and Larry ended up having a long conversation at the conclusion of which Larry said, "Well, would you mind if I came out?" Needless to say, we thought that was a TERRIFIC idea!!!
Larry would come out and walk the vacant lot with Tom discussing where paths might be, suggesting various specimen trees. He never drew an official design, but encouraged us to include many plants that were new to us. Tom started creating paths as clearing continued. We took out close to 100 trees ... many were saplings. Trees over 30' in height were professionally removed. Every few weeks, we would call Larry who would once again walk the property with us helping our vision become a reality.
Before we began planting, we knew that we wanted to accentuate an existing elevation change on the lot. To accomplish this we contacted, Johnny Massengill with Ponders, who we knew from an earlier project to give us some advice. He brought 50 tons of boulders that he deposited next to the street. Next, he and Tom picked the ones that seemed to give the drop off a “mountain feel.” Johnny’s crew dug big holes for placement so that the stones would look like they had always been there. We used about 40 tons of those he delivered.
Since I am talking about stone, it was in the woodland garden, that we learned that we wanted to line the paths with Tennessee field stone. Laying stone has become an ongoing winter project for Tom that continues to this day. Those paths became hardwood mulch which every year is replaced, with the old, well-rotted remains returned to the adjacent beds. After many years of repeating this process, we have wonderful soil (home to very happy earth worms) sitting on top of our native clay.
