Looking back: Beginning Havenwood
Listening to my ideas from ten years ago, or "How We Got Here"


Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Wife, Mother, Gardener (my former garden blog) in February 2014. It was fascinating to read it again as we approach our ten year anniversary of living and gardening at Havenwood. All the photos in the post are proper before photos of what we had when we moved in. If you are in a “before” kind of situation, it may be interesting for you to see where we started, what has worked and what has not! I’ll add some footnotes along the way for you to know more of how things went in the past ten years.
Beginning Our New Garden...
At the very beginning
All good things start at the very beginning, and that is where we are right now with our new garden and home, though its history started long before us. Professor Myers and his family moved from Alabama to Pennsylvania to purchase this Lot 120 in 1916 for the sum of $1,084.00. The large brick house was built here in 1925 after nine years of waiting and saving. They lived here for 19 years and then six more sets of owners followed. We are the eighth family to live under its slate roof, now nearly 90 years old.1
Since we are now the guardians of this property, we have dubbed it Havenwood - a name which encapsulates what we hope to create here on this nicely wooded lot. From the start, it has loads of charm and many needed repairs, but above all has the potential to be a peaceful and beautiful place for people to gather.2
Welcome to our first walk around the Havenwood Garden!
This overhead view from Google really helps to get you oriented...
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