Beautiful Gardens: Dennis Rawluck, Moosehorn, Manitoba

The home of Dennis Rawluck.

Beautiful Gardens

dennis rawluck moosehorn, manitoba

story by dorothy dobbie, photos by shauna dobbie and dorothy dobbie

The wedding pathway.

Dennis Rawluk is an artist. He sees beauty in everything around him. He paints these pictures in his mind, recording the nuances that make an indelible impression that later appear imprinted by him on some other surface or through another transformation of his environment.

Dennis uses plants the way he uses his paint brush—or his knitting needle or his crochet hook or his carpenter tools. If it can

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A cluster of pots on and around a stump.

Dennis Rawluck.

Dennis’s barn front, built for his son’s wedding.

Cluster of calla lilies, healthy in their pot.

At the edge of the “barn yard”.

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An assembly of pots in front of the house to celebrate Canada Day.

A collection of farming stuff to decorate.

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be done with the hands, Dennis has a way of channeling what he sees from mind’s eyes to the physical world.

For much of his life, though, Dennis farmed around Moosehorn after working a short time in the city. He eventually took a job managing a local hardware store to help pay the bills and create a future for his family on the farm. He knew there was something missing, but he was too busy to mourn.

In 2009, Dennis sold the farm to his oldest son and began a life free from the demands of raising cattle and growing grain. He bought a small house in town and made it a home by decorating it to his taste. One corner of a living room wall is painted with a winter birch, setting the scene for the signs of his creativity scattered through the rooms. One of these rooms is devoted to winter pass times of creating toques and baby blankets or painting on wood, the way he loves to do. He teaches his technique to others.

Dennis did all sorts of interesting things to make a living over the years. Eventually, after moving to Moosehorn, he saved enough to buy the little property across the street from his new home. There, he found scrap metal and old bit of motors which he sold for more money than he had paid for the property!

Gradually, his life became bigger. His children grew up and suddenly it was time for one of them to marry. Thus began the grand project of creating a dream place for his son to have a wedding. This was no small undertaking. The dream included horses and barns. The horses were easy enough to come by, but the barn would have to be constructed from the ground up.

Nothing daunted, Dennis began to plan a recreation of a farmyard, replete with a rustic arbour and a wooden walkway to host the bride and groom on their wedding march. They married in 2017 with 150 guests enjoying the setting.

What he constructed is now a local tourist draw which was featured in a two-page spread in the Winnipeg Free Press. Curious cars often drive slowly by to take a look. What they see is a garden with an arbour and outdoor dining space with the long winding wooden boardwalk leading

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The deep pink of one of the newer hydrangeas.

Clustered bellflowers surround a table and chairs.

Clustered bellflower up close.

Freshly opened squash flower.

A host of hostas.

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A collection of saddles.

to a classic barn—but wait… the barn is two-dimensional, something the casual observer would never guess. Dennis cut and painted a convincing façade worthy of a Hollywood movie.

His own personal garden is something of a wonder, too, an experiment designed to attract birds and wild critters. It is also a museum, a collection of farm memorabilia that adorns his garden shed walls on one side while the other supports a couple of farm murals depicting another barn and some contented cows, grazing on a green field.

Dennis loves plants and looks for

the latest hybrids to fill his planters and window boxes, which spill over with brilliant, magenta petunias.

Everyone in town knows Dennis. One of his other enterprises is to take consignments to grow and create wedding bouquets for eager brides. On the odd day he takes off from his work managing the hardware store, he is clearly missed. He is warmly welcomed at the local restaurant.

Life is full for this remarkable man. There can be no doubt that Dennis has come home to life. And there is even less doubt that life loves him. i

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Dennis Rawluck’s artwork

dennis brings craft to his paintings, which are dotted in the trees and throughout his garden. His artistry also shows in paving stones and, for winter, his work with yarn and textiles.

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A wide view of the front yard, with the old crab apple in the middle of it all, like an old man who knows this garden.

The moss covered branches of the old crab apple tree.

Beautiful Gardens

Maggie and Julian sale

Guelph, ontario story and photos by shauna dobbie

Most garden stories could start out: “The garden was a blank slate when the couple moved in twenty years ago.” This isn’t one of those stories. When Maggie and Julian Sale bought their house in Guelph 10 years ago, the seller asked: “Do you like to garden?”

Maggie said she’d like to do more of it. More is what she got with this beautiful property. She’d done some gardening in the past. At the house in Toronto, where they raised their three kids, she maintained the garden. They lived in Montreal for a period, where she kept a rose garden looking good. In their last house, a townhouse they bought in Toronto, she developed a garden for the first time on the postage stamp lot. ‘Coming here to this bigger garden—and having an interest

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A narrow walkway to the front yard.

A combination of hostas and ferns. The spotted plant is pulmonaria.

Hakonechloa grass planted en masse makes a statement.

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