Huron Expositor, 2007-07-25, Page 9The Huron Expositor • July 25, 2067 Page 9
News
From cucumbers to sunflowers and goldenrod
• Van Loon garden one of six featured in BIA and Horticultural Society tour
Susan Hundertmark
While they still fill their freezer
with the vegetables they grow,
John and Mary Van Loon, of
Seaforth, haven't had a market
garden on their four -acre Market
Street property for many years.
But, close to an acre of the land
is now an oasis of flow-
ers and trees where
John has taken fallen
limbs from his cedar
trees to build benches
and shelters where
the two sometimes
take a quiet moment
listening to the birds.
The Van Loon gar-
den is one of six gar-
dens featured in a
garden tour planned
for Aug. 4 and 5 by
the Seaforth BIA and
the Seaforth
Horticultural Society.
Several were judged last year
during the Communities in Bloom
competition.
The tour also includes the gar-
dens of Margaret DeJong, Helen
McNaughton, Eleanor Horst,
Sheila Geddes and Dorothea
Williamson.
The Van Loons moved to
Seaforth in 1973 and started their
market garden the next year,
growing vegetables they sold to
the cucumber plant in Dublin and
from a picnic table on the front
lawn for at least two decades.
Mary and her children spent the
whole growing season in the gar-
den planting, weeding, harvesting
and selling.
"Let's put it this way - my kids
used to look forward to the end of
the holidays so they could get
back to school and get some rest,"
laughs Mary.
But, when the cucumber plant
closed down and her kids grew up,
the Van Loons' market garden
came to an end but the gardening
did not.
Still planted in large rectangu-
lar beds similar to very large veg-
etable gardens, the Van Loons'
property is a riot of colour with a
huge variety of annuals, perenni-
als, flowering shrubs and trees of
all description.
"We have rows and rows of gar-
dens. But, if I had my way, they'd
be in beds ringed with grass but
John says it's easier to rototill
this way," she says.
John starts the day in the gar-
den around 6 a.m. - he's the one in
charge of weeding and he and
Mary have an ongoing debate
about which flowers are weeds
and which should be pulled.
"There are certain areas I won't
allow him to weed. I like golden-
rod and he likes to pull
it out," she says,
laughing that she's
noticed a very large
and beautiful Queen
Anne's Lace in the
middle of the plot he
weeds but she's
guessing he thinks
it's one of her peren-
nials she's planted.
"We won't tell him
about it," she says.
Like most garden-
ers, Mary says her
} truck is programmed
to stop at any nursery
she happens upon. And, while she
likes to look at the latest offer-
ings, she says she's more likely to
buy the less expensive seeds than
the grown plant.
`It takes me
longer to weed
because I
always see
plants 1 want to
save and
transplant,'—
Mary Van Loon
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Her patio and
picnic table are
filled with pot-
ted plants she's
either started
from seed or
See VAN LOON,
Page 18
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Susan Hundertmark photo
Mary and John Van Loon
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