By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
HUDSON: Milestones of April and Charlie Walton’s life together are commemorated throughout their five-acre property.
Their orchid collection reminds them of their early dates collecting examples of the plants in Panama. The Christmas tree design on the door of an outhouse is a nod to their December wedding anniversary. Directional signs point to their grandchildren’s houses.
And then there’s the little section of garden next to the patio, the only part of the property the couple had professionally designed.
”It was cheaper than divorce court,” Charlie Walton said with a grin.
The garden surrounds a stone pig trough he had bought his wife as a gift. The couple couldn’t agree on a garden design that would feature it, and the trough was too heavy to keep moving around till they settled on a spot. ”We needed a mediator,” April Walton explained, so they hired a landscape architect to intervene.
The Waltons laugh over that disagreement, a bump in the road that has taken their property from a horse pasture to a picturesque series of gardens over the last 21 years.
The gardens will be open one of the two days of the Hudson Home and Garden Tour, which takes place Friday and next Saturday.
The Waltons’ gardens will be open to tourgoers only next Saturday. On Friday it will be the site of a private tour by members of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.
The couple bought the bowling-alley-shaped property in 1990 because they wanted more land than their previous home in Hudson had. They remodeled the farmhouse that sits near the road at one end of the property, then built a home farther back on the land and moved in in 1995.
In the meantime, they started transforming the property. Initially they contoured the site and dug a fishing pond that takes up most of what is now their front yard. Then they started adding gardens and other features, a process that continues to evolve.
Most of their efforts have been concentrated on an area of the backyard enclosed by an 8-foot deer fence. At the rear of the area is a stone-walled mound planted with Charlie Walton’s prized conifers, which shields a working area that includes compost bins, a shed, a hoop house where the Waltons grow blueberries and a beehive to house the berries’ pollinators.
Along one side of the yard is the Privy Garden, a cross-shaped planting area of herbs, perennials and vegetables that April Walton called ”the garden of my dreams.” It’s named for the outhouse that was an anniversary present from her husband, a functional structure that’s decorative enough to serve as a focal point.
An arbor closer to the house is where the couple displays Charlie Walton’s bonsai trees and the orchids they overwinter in their greenhouse.
The Waltons developed an interest in orchids when they were living in Panama, where they met when April Walton’s father and Charlie Walton were stationed there in the military in the late 1960s. ”We dated collecting orchids in the jungles of Panama,” April Walton recalled.
The backyard also features an arbor framing a metal sculpture made by a friend’s daughter, Laura Lentz Miller; a small orchard of pear, apple and plum trees; a memory garden honoring the family’s pets; and a fountain made from an old grindstone. The yard contains utilitarian elements, too, including a 5-foot-deep cold frame where bonsai and other potted plants are protected in winter and large plastic tubs where the Waltons grow their tomatoes.
Behind the backyard gardens is a shed with a green roof the Waltons created just for fun. The roof holds trays of drought-tolerant plants, which turned out to be so heavy that the couple had to reinforce the roof to support them.
”We call it our million-dollar shed,” April Walton said with a laugh.
The gardens are an all-consuming hobby for the Waltons, both of whom come from gardening families. Charlie Walton studied horticulture in college and went on to spend 35 years with floral products maker Smithers-Oasis Co., 25 of those as its owner. He sold the company to its managers in a structured management purchase at the end of 2010, although he remains chairman of the board.
The Waltons aren’t done with the gardens, either. Their latest project is a barn under construction at the back of the property, which will house tractors, trucks and other equipment.
”Toys,” Charlie Walton said.
Unique features help to make home smart
Here are some of the features that make PNC SmartHome Cleveland so smart:
• Shape: The home’s simple, rectangular shape means there’s less exterior surface area where heat can be lost or gained.
• Walls: The exterior walls were built from 2-by-6 lumber instead of the usual 2-by-4s. That created a deeper space for extra blown-in insulation and provided cavities for pipes and wires.
The outside surfaces of the walls were covered with an air barrier and then by structural insulated panels. Those two layers add even more insulation and air sealing.
With all those layers, the exterior walls are about a foot thick, with an insulating value of about R-50. That’s significantly higher than the minimum R-13 required for exterior walls in Ohio.
• Doors and windows: The German-made doors and windows close much more tightly than typical doors —like a bank vault, SmartHome promoters say. The aluminum-clad wood windows are made from three panes of glass, with argon gas between the layers.
• Construction methods: Holes and seams in the outer surfaces of the living space were sealed to keep air from escaping. The walls also were designed to prevent heat from being conducted by the wood in the framing, a phenomenon called thermal bridging.
• Ventilation: An air exchanger continually brings in fresh outdoor air and expels stale indoor air. An entire houseful of air is exchanged about every three hours.
Before indoor air leaves the house, fans push it through channels, where warmth is transferred to the incoming air. That means the incoming air is already heated at least partly as it enters the living space, requiring less or even no energy to bring it to a comfortable level.
• Roof: The shingles have granules that reflect the sun’s rays and keep the roof cooler — and by extension, the entire house.
• Siding: The fiber-cement siding was made without petroleum-based chemicals and requires little maintenance.
• Landscaping: Landscaping features were designed to capture rainwater for reuse or encourage it to percolate through the soil and be filtered naturally, rather than running off into storm sewers and carrying pollutants to bodies of water.
Pervious concrete and pavers allow water to move through them to the soil. A rain garden collects rainwater until it can drain into the ground. A 500-gallon cistern captures water that runs off the roof so it can be used later on the landscape.
In addition, the trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses are mostly plants that are native to Northeast Ohio, so they should thrive with little maintenance.
• Detached garage: While the SmartHome has no garage now, it will at its permanent site. The garage will be detached so fumes and chemicals are kept away from the house.
— Mary Beth Breckenridge
TICKET INFORMATION
Five homes and three gardens will be featured on the Hudson Home and Garden Tour, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and next Saturday.
Charlie and April Walton’s garden, however, will be open only next Saturday. On Friday it will be closed for a private visit by landscape designers.
The homes on the tour include three that date to the city’s early decades. The other two were built in the early 20th century.
Tickets are available in advance for $20 at the Learned Owl Book Shop and Acme Fresh Market, both in Hudson. On tour days, they cost $25 at the booth on the village green at state Routes 91 and 303.
The tour is sponsored by the Hudson Garden Club. Proceeds fund tree planting in Hudson, the club’s annual scholarships and other grants and community projects.
For more information, call 330-653-8253 or visit http://www.hudsongardenclub.org
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook.