Our Secret Garden--Looking Back

On Sunday June 5, 2011 I posted this brief history of our house and the development of our "secret garden".  So I thought it was the perfect time to post it again.  Sadly, one of the two giant weeping willows is no longer with us.  As you read here earlier this month, when it was cut down, the willow held its own secret--a nest of raccoons, but they all got out alive.

 Ever since the tornados several days ago and the arrival of house guests, I've been neglecting this blog. (Our electricity was out this morning, but now it's back.  Luckily the worst of the destruction stopped 20 miles away.)

Next Sunday (June 12) in our town of Grafton, MA, the Historical Society and the  Garden Club are sponsoring a tour of nine "Historic Homes and Gardens" and ours is one of them.  So I thought I'd post the brief house history/garden write-up that I prepared for the booklet and show you some photos of the "Secret Garden" (plus grape arbor, pool, fish pond and waterfall) that we've put into the stone foundation of the  Colonial Barn on our property that burned down in 1965 .  When  we bought the place in 1974,  the area  where the barn burned was filled with weeds and rubble, but it was my husband's idea to fill it with a pond, swimming pool and "secret garden."

The Daniel Rand House -- Grafton MA. The rear wing of this building was the original house, built in 1723 by Daniel Rand, one of the original proprietors of Shrewsbury.   On Dec. 15, 1723, his son Solomon was the first child baptized in the town when it was incorporated. Solomon lived 80 years and is buried on the property.  His gravestone is on display in the lower garden.  Two of Solomon’s sons served in the Revolutionary War.  In 1822, the property was sold at public auction  to Tarrant Merriam of Grafton,  a wealthy landholder who built the Greek Revival farmhouse which now faces Nelson Street.  Because he didn’t like to go all the way to Shrewsbury Center to church, Merriam had the boundary of Grafton moved slightly to the north, so that the house is now in Grafton.

The Rands built an enclosed walkway from their house to the barn so they could feed the animals without plowing through snow.  This very large Colonial barn, measuring 120 feet by 45, burned down in 1965, taking with it four horses and a cradle believed to have come over on the Mayflower.  All that remained was the stone foundation, which now serves as the walls surrounding the enclosed garden and pool area.

From Nelson Street the “Secret Garden” inside the barn foundation walls is invisible, but plantings of perennials can be seen on the left side of the house and running along the fence that leads to a second (modern) structure built  twenty years ago to serve as guest house, office and (on the lower level) a garage, rec room and bathroom, opening onto the pool.

 In the pool area there is a rock garden, small waterfall and fishpond on the far (south) end, plantings of impatiens, foxglove, irises and shade-loving perennials.  Antique cast-iron garden furniture and small garden sculptures can be seen throughout the area. On the  near (north) end of the enclosure is a grape arbor , supported by a pergola with ionic columns.  Hydrangeas, hibiscus, roses  and many perennials bloom throughout the season.

 When the house and three acres of property were bought from from  Richard and Marie-Louise Bishop in 1974, it came with the two large weeping willows, three different colors of lilac bushes, an apple tree, blackberry patches , lilies of the valley and a wide variety of irises. 

A Tree Falls in Grafton

We had a lot of excitement around here lately (for a sleepy rural village.) During a windstorm a few weeks ago, one of the two huge, ancient weeping willow trees at the back of our house split, and half of it fell on the driveway.  The tree clearly was hollow and rotting inside and we called a tree man who said we'd have to take the rest of it down.  The other willow could be saved for now, but it needed to have dead branches removed and the rest of it pruned so it would be fuller and healthier next year. (That's the main house on the left.  The building on the right has guest rooms and Nick's office on the top floor and the garage and rec room leading to the pool on the lower floor.)

This was really bad news to the Gage family, because the giant trees, planted at least 150 years ago, had been sort of the symbol of our house, the back of which dates back to 1722.  I even painted one of the trees on our mailbox (along with our late cat) and the kids had named our "estate" "Twin Willows".

On Wednesday morning, three young men working for the tree service came with two trucks.  One was a bucket truck lifting a man high enough to cut off limbs and the other two men fed the limbs into a wood chopper in the other truck.  First they cut all the branches off the sick tree.

Clearly it was rotten at the core.

When nothing was left but a lonely trunk, the man in the bucket started removing dead branches from the other tree.

While I was taking pictures I noticed that the lilies of the valley outside the kitchen window were in bloom, so I picked lots.

By afternoon it was time to take down the lonely stump of the victim tree.

One guy took out a really big chain saw and another held on to a rope attached to the top of it.

He cut out a big wedge so the tree would fall in the right direction

Then he cut from the other direction straight through.  It starts to fall...

And it's down.

But as the three tree men crowded around, they saw eyes peeking out of a hole in the tree at the far right in this photo.  It was a baby racoon that quickly pulled back inside.  They decided to cut off  a piece like a lid to the log to see what was inside.  Immediately one baby raccoon raced out and climbed high into the cleft of a nearby tree.

A big momma raccoon also burst out and disappeared into the distance.  And two more babies remained inside the hollow, alive but not going anywhere.

The three tree men put the lid back on the trunk and pondered what to do.  They called the log truck man who was supposed to take away the logs and told him not to come till tomorrow.  One guy called his girlfriend and she told him to bring one of the babies home as a pet, but I nixed that.  I called Tufts Veterinary School nearby and they said just leave the babies alone unless they're wounded or become deserted by the mother.  The tree guys left.  Later at dusk, somebody said they saw the mother raccoon across the road.

Thursday I woke up worried about what would happen to the babies when the log truck guy came.  He didn't come until the afternoon.

But first we took the lid off the hollow trunk...It was empty.  The mother raccoon had gathered the three babies in the night and moved them to another home.

So the log man picked up the remains of the tree...

And we said farewell to the weeping willow that had stood sentinel at our house for more than a century.