Our Garden re-Birth Project

Very nice work Frank - you should be pleased with the results. I hate to add to your list but you are gonna do something about the green plastic chairs aren't you - please - for me!

Toni Ciuraneta said:

Way cool Frank.

Now my english vocabulary has been increased, thanks for the info.

The pergola I'm thinking about making will measure 5x5mts (16x16 feet) aproximately.

I'll come back with some questions if I may.

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Yep Toni, 5 metres by 5 metres makes it a pergola and not an arbour. You certainly may ask questions -I only hope that I have the answers.

Ian Barley said:

Very nice work Frank - you should be pleased with the results. I hate to add to your list but you are gonna do something about the green plastic chairs aren't you - please - for me!

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Thanks Ian, it's nice to hear from you.

Don't worry, the green chairs will be relegated to backup duty. I will either make some chairs over the winter or we will purchase some next spring.

your yard`s looking good frank! how many tons (tonnes) of rock have you moved?

tod evans said:

your yard`s looking good frank! how many tons (tonnes) of rock have you moved?

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Thanks Tod.

I am not sure about the weight of the stuff that I have moved, but I know its a LOT. I figure that, starting in late March, I have moved somewhere between 900 and 1200 wheelbarrow loads material.

Spring 2009 Update

In May, I managed to steal enough time away from working on the book about my hometown, to build a walled rose garden in the front.

Here I have started work on the wall:

Part way through the job, my cheap wheelbarrow (which I have repaired several times) collapsed:

I took the last few loads with the wheelbarrow supported on my dolly, but I am not going to do that anymore. It’s time for a new wheelbarrow.

Here is the new wheelbarrow in use to place limestone in the tench:

Here I am pouring a concrete pad for the sundail which is to go in the middle of the garden:

You can see that the old wheelbarrow now has a new role in life as a cement bucket.

Also, it is amazing how well the sundial works:

The garden looks really good with the sundial in the middle. In this photo, I have removed the tulips and am starting to plant roses, but I have not quite finished the wall:

I should mention how good the other walled front garden that I built a cpouple of years ago looks and how little maintenance it now requires:

Here is a view of both front gardens (with the wall completed):

And here is a picture taken in late June with many of the roses in blume:

Very nice, Frank. The gardens really dress up the front of your house. Next year the roses should be even nicer as they mature a bit.

How late do roses bloom in your part of the world? As long as I deadhead them weekly or so, mine will bloom pretty much year-round. I force mine to sleep a bit, though. About the end of January, I'll prune them back again to several bare 18" to 24" tall canes per plant. After about 6 weeks of rest and recuperation, the blooms will be back, and by midsummer the plants will all be 4' to 10' tall again, depending on the variety.

That came out beautiful. Looks like a magazine cover

Thanks, Vaughn and Bob.

Vaughn, the roses that I planted are ever-blooming carpet roses that only grown to a height of about 2.5 feet. Roses generally bloom here from late May to mid November. Having said that, we are having a mild autumn, and there are a few buds right now on some of the rose bushes.

Vaughn McMillan said:

How late do roses bloom in your part of the world?

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Pretty much til first freeze, depending on the variety. Some will only bloom for a month or so. These pics are of a John Cabot Explorer rose (maybe should have been called Exploder). Very hardy, early buds will survive freezing rain, blooms through June.



And this shot was used for the local Garden Society's Y2K yearbook cover (lots of Photoshop work removing telephone and cable wires).

Exploder would certainly be an approprite name Ed. Your roses look great! Mine are a lot more subdued.

Autumn 2009 Update

(post 1 of 5)

From mid October until early November, I built the long promised arbour at the garage side of our house. I built according to this plan: which I purchased from Lee Valley. I'm sorry to have to say that the instructions with the plan are not very good. However, the drawings are OK, and (with some improvisation) I was able to figure out how to build the arbour.

Since, this is actually a woodworking project, I will cover it in more detail than I have done for most of the other work described in this thread.

The arbour was made out of Eastern White Cedar from the Ottawa region, mostly rough sawn.

I cut a template of the arbour’s interior footprint out of cheap plywood . Here it is in location. One corner of the arbour will be on our neighbours property but that’s Ok with them and with us. We already have a somewhat shared garden between our two houses.

I pounded four metal post supports with adjustable tops at the four corners of the template, squared them and adjusted the bolts:

Next, the four 3.5 inch by 3.5 inch corner posts are temporarily in position with boards clamped to the top approximately in the position of the real top cross pieces:

The wood for the trellis screens at the sides is supposed to be knot free, but I could not easily locate a source of knot free cedar. I did have a 2x6 dressed clear white pine board on hand, so I used it.

Next, I rounded over the edges of the posts with a 1/4 inch roundover bit on a hand-held router:

Every piece is being sanded with 80 grit paper and, in cases where I am not rounding over the corners, I am sanding the knife edges.

Here, one of the two side screens is being assembled on the floor:

Autumn 2009 Update

(post 2 of 5)

The instructions and diagrams showed that somehow pieces of 3/4 inch dowel were involved with the post caps, but I could not determine exactly how the dowels were to be used. So, I came up with something that would work and utilized 1 inch dowel rather than 3/4 inch. I decided to drill a hole for the dowel into the top of the post then right through the cap and into the beam above it.

Here, 1 inch holes are being drilled through the centres of the parts that will be used to make the caps:

Using a small piece of 4/4 wrapped with a few layers of masking tape in order to simulate a post with a loose fitting cap, I hammered trim into the bottom of the caps:

Next, I screwed the cap tops into position:

The next task was to cut all the posts to a uniform level. The instructions suggested that I might want to use a circular saw to to do this job. I don't want to use a circular saw when standing on a ladder, so that was out. The alternative offered in the instructions was a hand saw and that would have worked. But, I guess that whoever wrote the instructions had never heard of either a Festool or Bosch jig saw with long, wide, strong, and guided blades. I first scored each post on all 4 sides then cut all the way through. The results were very good!

Next, the screens were attached. I want them to be easily removable. The instructions claim that they are, but I could not figure out how they managed this in spite of looking very closely at all the drawing and the pictures. So, I screwed 2 small blocks to the bottom spline, then I attached the bottom of the screen to the bottom cross rail with screws through the two blocks. Two more screws, through the top cross rail into the top spline, completed the job.


Using a partly completed cap as a guide template, 5 centimetre deep 1 inch diameter holes were drilled into the tops of all the posts. Then, the completed caps were placed on top of all the posts with the dowel extending up above the cap about 5 centimetres.

Autumn 2009 Update

(post 3 of 5)

Four beams, four braces, and six rafter pieces were cut with a jig sawafter transferring the full size fancy end patterns to the wood using tracing paper:


I made a small drilling jig then used it to drill holes to accept the dowels into the bottoms of two of the beams:

Six centimetre deep 42 millimetre wide notches were cut into the top of these two beams just above the position of the posts. I had previously milled all the lumber to be used for the beams, rafters, and braces to 40 millimetres so this left 2 millimetres of play with each notch. Here two beams are in place on the posts and the other two beams are being checked for position in the notches.

After cutting all the beam and rafter pieces to length and shape and assuring myself that the notched beams fit properly on the posts, I moved the operation to the deck outside the woodworking shed. The plans called for the rafters to sit on top of the beams and to intersect with each other with notches on the top of one set and on the bottom of another set. I decided to do something slightly different, that is, to cut small (1 centimetre deep) notches in the top of the beams and in the bottom of the rafters:

I think this looks a little better and it makes for easier positioning of the finished rafters on the beams on their final position on the posts. And, it will take fewer screws to hold the rafters in place. Notice that I lettered the notches just in case the pieces turned out not to be fully symmetrical (it turns out that they were symmetrical, but it is better to be safe).

Here is the bigger picture that the above close-up was extracted from:

And here is a photo of all the rafters in position o the beams and intersecting with each other:

Now that I knew everything had been cut properly, it was time to route chamfers on the top edges of all the beams and rafters and to sand everything (to 80 grit). Many sanders were put to use:

I used the guide that you see attached to the router in order to navigate past the notches.

There were no instructions about how to mount the braces. I decided to drill two 3/8 inch holes part way through the wood on both ends of the braces leaving about 4 centimeters of wood in the bottom of each hole. Here the holes are being drilled on my drill press:

A coat of Sikkins Cetol 1 078 Natural stain was applied to all the beams, rafters and braces then left for about a day to dry. I will apply a second coat to the entire arbour in the spring.

Autumn 2009 Update

(post 4 of 5)

No screws at all were used to attach the beams to the posts -the dowels and deep notches did the job and, just in case, the braces to be installed later will secure the beam assembly to the posts Because of the notches in the beams, it was possible to hold all the rafters in place with only 6 screws.


The red arrows point to the screws.

Finally, the four braces were screwed into place. Here is another of photo of what I thought at the time was the finished arbour:

Autumn 2009 Update

(post 5 of 5)

Margaret thought that the post support caps detracted from the overall appearance. Once that was pointed out to me, I did agree. So today, I added something that mostly hides them. First I had to saw off the portion of the shims that projected above the caps. Then 1" x 2" strips were screwed around the post just above the caps:

Thin (about 1/2 inch thick) prices of cedar were then screwed into the strips and into each other to, thus boxing the caps on three sides. Then, since again I thought I was finished, stain was applied.

But, it was pointed out to me that I should have bevelled the tops of the skirts that surround the metal post caps. So I did.

Also, more than one neighbour asked me why I had only enclosed three sides of each cap, so I added a fourth side to all the skirts. Now, it is finished.

In the spring I will apply another coat of stain, put in a walkway and plant clematis to climb up the arbour.