By Grace Suh
Photo Credit: Christopher Leitch
Each month we’ll bring a preview of our upcoming Habitat Gardens. For our first tour, on April 13th, we’ll be visiting three woodland gardens in Merriam, including this one, called Loomis Woods.
Christopher and Stuart had been looking for a house for a while. That Sunday afternoon, they were tempted to skip the last address on their list. They were tired, and sure they would hate it as much as the others. But then they pulled into the driveway.
“The proportions, the light, all the space.” Christopher remembers. “Everything was right. We knew we were home.”
That was 2003. That fall, Christopher drove around the neighborhood collecting bags of leaves off curbs and piled them all around the yard. The next spring, he began planting, which means their garden celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.
Originally part of the historic Loomis farm, their yard was the site of the henhouse and horse paddock. Across the street was a cow pasture. Christopher and Stuart “love referring to our property as Loomis Woods,” to keep this history alive.
“Stuart and I are both from small towns, so we love having the space around us and being surrounded by trees that are easily 100 years old, if not older.”
In what sounds like an ideal arrangement, Christopher is the gardener of the couple. “Stuart likes to draft grocery lists and do a lot of cooking and I like to be in the garden for six or eight hours at a time.”
Christopher jokes that his is “a perfect garden.” That doesn’t mean “a specimen garden in which everything performs on schedule and stays under 24 inches tall. A perfect garden is where the plants find where they want to be and over years form this wonderful little community of things that get along together and are happy.”
Christopher’s garden is part of our Habitat Garden Tours on April 13th. Sign up and join us!
Questions? Email grace@deeprootskc.org
