Beautiful Gardens: Joel Geleynse, Hamilton

An overview of the long narrow back garden, with a greenhouse in the back created with reclaimed materials. Beautiful

This is not your typical garden. Joel Geleynse (rhymes with McKenzie) bought the house about 10 years ago in downtown Hamilton and just started a garden in the 17-foot wide by 120-foot deep lot. He had no experience and his neighbours told him not much would grow under the big black walnut in the back corner; he took their warnings as a challenge. Aside from the black walnut, the yard was a mess, open to the lane behind it. It was full of junk and the junk went deep; old gravel and rusted out metal would come up wherever he put in a shovel. “It felt really industrial and not cared for in many years,” he recalls. Joel was a student and didn’t have much money to spare, so he started collecting others’ cast-offs to use. For his first try, he laid down pallets and put soil over and in them. That year he had lush green vegetation but no vegetables because the roots couldn’t get deep enough.

Just outside the greenhouse strawberries grow with abandon.

Just outside the greenhouse strawberries grow with abandon. So many flowers and vegetables in the raised garden by the greenhouse.

Ferns, hostas and sedum all together.

An old wood stove is a replacement for campfires, which aren’t allowed on this small city lot.

The next year, he used old bricks to build a raised bed, which proved fruitful. Since then he’s continued to expand the garden and add to it every year with whatever he could scrounge. “I decided to make, literally, a f lower bed out of an old bed,” he says. You get an idea of his innate intelligence and sense of humour. The f lower bed lasted a couple of years, then the rotted wood was thrown on the fire heap.

That fire heap, by the way, is now for a woodstove in the backyard. The stove is a compromise after the fire department told him no more campfires. The woodstove gives the idea of a campfire with the delicious smell, keeps Joel safe from bylaw officers and keeps his neighbours safe from worry.

A collection of windows eventually became a greenhouse, which he built under the black walnut, where little would grow. He would go out every morning with his coffee and pick up the droppings from the black walnut. “I kept thinking, if I just put enough new material on top, I should be able to outrun whatever contamination is going on.” So far, so good.

The result is an unconventional garden. Most gardeners like spring the best but Joel prefers the fall, when he can move things around and replant. He pulls out some of the spent material (other spent material stays where it is to rot and feed the soil) and composts it. Then, working like a painter as he describes it, he puts a bit of something in this spot and another bit of something in that other spot. He finds spring less inspiring,

A chair for reading inside the greenhouse on chilly days.

A bunch of batchelor buttons grow in front of a planted up rain gutter attached tothe fence.

Sweet alyssum.

The bloom of an onion breaking through.

Self-sown annuals compete for attention from the sun.

Joel has fashioned a wind chime from pieces of old sunflower stems.

A chair for reading inside the greenhouse on chilly days. A bunch of batchelor buttons grow in front of a planted up rain gutter attached to the fence. with a blank slate, preferring to have all his colours on the canvas, he says.

Planting in rows is something people do for themselves, because it’s easier, Joel tells me. “Plants get to compete with each other and that biodiversity, that variety, is so aesthetically pleasing.” Sometimes the yield takes a hit, but that’s okay. If his onions are small, that’s no big deal because he got to leave some alyssum to grow bigger, and it was beautiful and provided nectar for the birds and bees. “I love leaving space for the natural process. Until you have to remove something for practical reasons, just let it be.”

He appreciates the look of plants that are dead and will leave them standing where they are. Great tall sunf lowers don’t lose their beauty or their purpose after they die, not for Joel; they continue to feed animals and keep an amazing structure. Some he takes them down and cuts them up to make wind chimes, which have more of a chunky, earthy sound than a tinkle.

He plants where spaces are and leaves garden volunteers if they’re attractive and feed butterf lies and bees. He’s not fussy about what is native, but most things that require too much cultivation won’t find a space in his garden because they won’t grow from seed.

He and his partner, Bradley Ingham, also own 27 acres in Ancaster. Here they are experimenting with growing and animal husbandry. They now have 15 horses. They piled horse manure next to the barn and after a couple of months decided to start a garden there. Resources say that you should wait three months to a year for horse manure to decompose, but they were impatient. And… it worked. “Just absolutely double anything I would have got in my backyard in Hamilton,” Joel enthuses.

He doesn’t intend to take his gardening further and become a market gardener, though. He likes working as a psychologist, for one thing; for another, he doesn’t want his hobby to become work. When people are paid to do something, he notes, they won’t do it if they are not paid. He found this happened with yoga: he used to do it all the time, but now that he’s been certified to teach, he doesn’t do it unless he’s leading a class.

Gardening goes through aesthetic phases. When I started writing about gardens some 20 years ago, few people were vegetable gardening, or the vegetable gardens were in a back corner somewhere. Mixed borders of perennials, annuals and shrubs were all the rage, and great effort was expended to have things blooming throughout the gardening season. It’s still true to a certain extent, but I believe the future of gardening is closer to what Joel is doing than anything else.

“I guess I don’t come with any ideology at all, other than that biodiversity is a good thing, and taking care of the soil, and I don’t think anything is wrong with hybrids unless they’re displacing anything.” i

Vines, lights and a rod for hanging plants.