The Devil Is In The Details

 

Once curtained, now with mini-blinds, this room attempts to balance old and new

 

The goal of restoring a heritage house to good order presents challenges to the homeowner, especially one resolved to remain true to the building's original spirit. There will always be some need to accommodate change. The question is where we draw the line, so that the updated bits feel like they fit into, or at least don't flatly contradict, the original program. For unless we are prepared to inhabit a museum (where the original look simply doesn't ever change) a house has to evolve to accommodate new living patterns, changing tastes and ongoing technological innovation. For example, in the photo above mini-blinds now stand in for the fabric curtains the room started out with back in 1913. This new arrangement better modulates the superabundant morning light that would have overwhelmed those flimsy curtains. However, the iron rod the curtains hung from is still there, an unobtrusive token of the way things used to be. The photo also depicts light falling across a modern stereo speaker, and further to the right the edge of a television screen can be discerned. Both speakers and television mark changing use of the room: the television sits in the place once occupied by a built-in radio cabinet (shown on both the 1933 and 1951 floor plans, but gone when I arrived). The built-in radio was itself an evolution from whatever had originally occupied the alcove, as radio wasn't widespread until the 1930s.

 

Once a cooling cupboard, now much-modified for storage

Another example of how arrangements change over time: before the advent of standalone refrigerators (or even the ice-box era that preceded them) there was a time when a simple-yet-effective device, known as a cooling cupboard, offered a way to keep food from spoiling (see photo above). Today the original built-in cooling cupboard in our house remains intact, in modified form, but now used for storage rather than cooling. As originally designed, the cooling cupboard was of uniform width from floor to ceiling, with a door opening towards the south wall of the house. There were also two screened vents located in the wall adjacent the back door to enable the airflow that caused the cooling (courtesy of the stack effect, which exploited hot air's tendency to rise). Today the base of the cupboard reflects the original width of the cooler while the upper tier has dramatically shrunk, which allowed access to the base via a lid. Since our renovation of this room, the lid has been fixed in place and four new matching doors open towards the kitchen. The space the original cooling cupboard door opened into is now occupied by a built-in seat, marking a sea change in design of the room. The process of adapting rooms to changing times and uses without fully displacing the original program involves seeking a balance of old and new ingredients. Each room in the house raises unique issues for the person who gets to do the choosing. How far one goes in restoring a feature, or in adapting it creatively to new ends, is a judgment that you, the current homeowner, get to make. Far too many people, however, opt for casual updating to contemporary standards, which frequently show as cheap and nasty incongruities. This rarely works in character houses and never in those with any real pedigree.

 

How a cooling cupboard is intended to function

All objects in daily use wear down to some degree over time, even if they have been well made and designed to last. As, for example, most of the doorknobs and escutcheon plates in our bungalow (photo at left): still gamely working 110 years on, but showing a degree of surface wear, or patina as it's sometimes called. There is one knob, however, located on the inside of a cupboard where it gets little use and no exposure to light, that offers a glimpse of how these knobs may have looked while still new (photo, right below).

It's often easier (and certainly cheaper and far less involving) to fully replace things that are wearing down rather than to renew and restore what has been subjected to continual use in daily life. Yet I feel that restoration is truly worth all the extra time, trouble and cost if it contributes materially to an authentic period look that is central to the meaning of your house. 

This essay chronicles my efforts to strike a balance in an important room in our heritage bungalow in Saanich. Designed by Victoria architect Hubert Savage for himself and wife Alys, this small-but-artistic home's rather complex personality is defined by its strikingly original living room. Virtually a square, it is certainly the most highly featured (and largest) room in a modest 1500+ square feet. With abundant windows on its east- and south-facing walls, and furnished with built-in features like coffered ceilings, wooden wainscots, plate rails, bookshelves and even a signed art-frieze, this room is obviously intended to make a lasting impression. Yet for all its fancy features, it revolves around a brick fireplace and central tiled hearth - a program typical of bungalows back in their era. 

 

Coffered ceilings, wainscots, plate rails, bookshelves, all centred on the fireplace

Keeping faith with the spirit of the bungalow is what I aspired to do throughout the house. My quandary in this room was how best to accommodate necessary change while restoring the fireplace and its hearth. Fireplaces were central to the North American bungalow conception, and in this house fireplaces in the living and dining rooms had once been the main source of heat. The conundrum was thus how to renew the fireplace without transforming it into something it was never intended to be. Some principal rooms, bathrooms and kitchens especially, have been modified fundamentally over the years. Kitchens, for example, have evolved from being mostly unadorned work rooms where the job of food preparation was carried out using movable apparatus, to today coming with built-in cupboards, continuous counter-tops, and other special presentation features that make it a more consciously social world; yet, one that still accommodates - if now far more grandly - the workaday labour of food preparation. 

 

 

1921 kitchen: a spare workspace with a hoosier cabinet, table and stool, range and sink

Today there is every incentive to substitute modern components for authentic materials, often resulting in additional muddying of residual period feeling. Fashions do change over time, ditto technologies, and as a result some rooms tend to be remodelled increasingly frequently. Sometimes this process is insensitive to the original look to an extreme degree. Kitchens may be redone as often as every thirty or forty years, after which subsequent renovations are invited to compound what began as simple errors of fashion. And, we humans seem to want to be resetting some clock or other to zero, in whatever choices we happen to be making. Often we simply chase after novelty. 

 

Our home's latest kitchen remake, as shown in the photos below, attempted a rescue from the compounding impacts of earlier modifications (one from the fifties that wasn't an affront, perhaps carried out by the Savages themselves; and a second from the late 70s or early 80s that was much more discordant). For example, the 80s updating removed a pair of the original low cupboards and archway that defined a small galley kitchen off an eating area, which accommodated both the sink and a fridge (arguably making for too much activity on a single counter). The 80s remake displaced this arrangement with bulky new painted cupboards that made no attempt to fit in, adding a new counter and cupboards jutting from the west wall with a hideous brown counter top, and some stark white linoleum flooring thrown in for good measure. This remake turned its back on previous designs in favour of current fashions, including then-trendy avocado and harvest-gold appliances. Nothing more than change for its own sake, this gained little in overall cupboard space and no new separation of cooking activities (sink and stove were now made to crowd the same counter space occupied formerly by the sink and fridge). Why the sink wasn't at least removed to the new counter top, where it would

1951 pantry plan: low cupboards, archway intact

have rationalized cooking operations better by greater separation, remains a mystery. Old was in this instance simply displaced by new - and not a well-thought-through version of new either. And then quite quickly, fashions moved on and this ensemble felt severely dated. At least that's how it seemed to me upon arrival: poor taste from the outset, now aging badly. The entire shemozzel called out for integration into a much more coherent whole. 

 

A subtle built-in look goes a long way to fit new cupboards into the existing format

Fortunately, we were able to distill a few design-rules from close scrutiny of the remains of the original format, which helped us reintegrate the space. We elected to go back to the original high baseboards and low quarter-round mouldings that were characteristic throughout the rest of the house. We also replaced the cumbersome 80s cupboards with a more pleasing (because more stepped) configuration, made of markedly better materials. We opted to show off the solid wood construction by finishing these cabinets in clear stain, which dramatized the wood. We also wanted to give them a built-in look, in order that they jibe with the bones of the house. To achieve this, we extended the band running beneath the panelled ceiling along the top of the cupboards (see photo above). To us, this design-approach helped achieve a more convincing blend of old and new. The photos above and below depict the kitchen's new mixture of features: original ceiling treatments in freshened colours combined with new marmoleum tile flooring in a quasi-retro pattern; original double-hung sash windows and wood trims now mated with restored baseboards (along with the original

Cupboards framed consistently

ceiling panels, this ensemble of elements established a vital continuity with the past). A new central island feature replaced the old awkwardly projecting counter, with its unfinished vertical wood facade and ugly brown counter top. We took advantage of the spatial gain the new island conferred to sequester sink and stove in separate counters, while simultaneously gaining added space for a dishwasher, storage cupboards, and a two-sided overhang for bar stools so that meals could be consumed there. The three of us now eat in the kitchen unless entertaining, in which case we add in the dining room space. Also, we introduced three banks of recessed pot lighting, along with shielded lights under the principal cupboards for night effects. The banks of pot lights are individually switched, optimizing versatility.

A blend of old and new ingredients in our 2005 rendition of the kitchen

 

To return to the living room: in bungalow idiom, convention has it that this is typically the most masculine of all the principal rooms. Often furnished with darkened wood wainscots, beamed ceilings and built-in bookshelves (after the image of a male hunting-lodge) it also included a prominent stone or brick fireplace capped by a thick wooden mantel plank. Far from being threatening however, this ensemble was intended to serve as a cozy retreat from the more demanding world of the downtown office. It was a place where family and friends would gather of an evening (in winter, around a crackling fire) to share stories from daily life.

 

 

Integrating new features consistent with an older program is restoration's goal

As it happened, this living room had been decoratively mugged a number of times after the long Savage tenure. These assaults mostly involved tacky substitutions of ultra-modern finishes for the more-convincing original materials, so could often be addressed with cosmetic surface treatments. For example, stark-white ceiling panels between the flat-black wooden beams could simply be repainted to an off-white biased subtly towards yellow. And the equally intrusive stark-white wallpaper suffocating original Douglas fir panels sitting beneath the frieze band would turn out to be dry-strippable. And even the mis-sized mirror rudely inserted in place of the earlier built-in mirror could be rectified by remaking the original (given access to skill, knowledge and knot-free old growth, all of which we had through Vern Krahn's masterful agency). To my eye, all these hapless mistakes of decor merely diluted the design-consistency of the original artifact. We were fortunate that so much of it could be set right so straightforwardly, even if this did sometimes involve some sleight of hand. For example, once stripped, the wallpaper had evidently left a visible residue on the wooden panels. But our painter (Mike Abernethy of Double A Painting) suggested we deal with this by using a mixture of paint and coarse sand, which he felt would give the effect of authentic plastering. Plaster bands were a common living room treatment back in the bungalow era, so we agreed to try this out. The subterfuge worked so well that we thoroughly embraced the new look! By this point we had addressed sufficient errors to notice remediation's corrective effect on perceptions of the whole: each restored component palpably strengthened the period feeling of the room. Once these problems were en route to resolution, I felt free to engage with the vexing question of how best to approach the brick fireplace surround.

 

 

Lawson Wood frieze, honeycombed leaded glass, plaster panel, dark-stained wood

Restoring the ensemble of fireplace components to again serve as the focal point of the living room was a tremendously challenging undertaking. There were, after all, some serious issues of deterioration to address. The fireplaces -  heavily relied on for heat for some four decades - only came into the relaxed use more typical of California-style bungalows with the installation of powerful Wesix electric wall heaters in the early fifties. Subsequent owners would have continued the more celebratory use of fire this enabled (as have we during our time here) because a fire burning in the grate has a mesmerizing effect on social gatherings. When I acquired the house, the firebox floor was crumbling after seventy-five years of burning - so much so I was hesitant to even have a fire. Also, some of the surrounding inner bricks had loosened from long-exposure to intense heat. And somehow too a few of the hearth tiles had also come free, and a number of these were either chipped or broken.

 

 

This four-bar Wesix wall heater made reliance on fires for heat unnecessary

The job of renewing the fireplace really began when heritage carpenter Vern Krahn - busy healing the abused wooden features around the fireplace - recommended seasoned bricklayer Udo Heineman as someone who could sort the firebox floor and its surround. I trusted Vern totally by this point, so I immediately ran with his suggestion. And in short order, Udo remade the floors of the fireboxes compatibly using new heat-proof bricks, then carefully conserved, and skilfully reset, the original curved bricks that give the inner fireplace its fitted look (these bricks are no longer available commercially, so I was anxious to see them reused in order to conserve the founding look). The picture below shows the dining room fireplace after Udo rebuilt it (it shares a chimney stack with the living room fireplace). Note the fitted look obtained via reuse of the original interior bricks.

 

 

New firebox floor, inner bricks carefully re-mortared

 

Once the firebox issue was in hand, another big problem loomed: at some point the brick surround had been painted over a first time, in what I discerned (from chipping paint off the bricks) had been a somewhat-compatible buff tone. I speculated that this first painting may have been triggered by some surface spalling of bricks around the mouth of the fireplace, attributable to the intense heat. The bricks comprising the surround, however pretty originally, showed poor interior composition and inferior firing through their pattern of wear, which over time tended to make the outer surface inherently unstable. I would also wager that a downstream owner made the regrettable decision to bury the aging buff-colour under an unsubtle undercoat-white (visually akin to the icing on an angel-food cake, as in the photo below). I invested considerable effort in attempting to clean this paint-mess from the surface of the bricks, thinking I might possibly regain a semblance of the original finish. But the bricks weren't having it (the interior of the brick being of entirely different composition from its outer skin) and eventually I realized that my approach just wasn't going to fly. So, I made the fateful choice to instead patch any bands of mortar disintegrated by heat, then fully repaint the surround in a colour more consistent with the scheme now evolving in the living room (yellow/gold and off-whites toned to yellow, which we thought showed well against the flat-black of stained old-growth fir). This decision made, I was free to focus squarely on the challenge of restoring the original tiled hearth, which as a project needed to happen before any painting of the brick surround.

 

Angel-food-cake-icing coating the surround, hearth-tiles being carefully loosened

Job one was loosening the tiles still gripped by the original mortar, taking care to avoid further damage. Once loosened, it was apparent the tiles needed thorough cleaning. I decided to soak them for a few days in a bucket of water laced with TSP (tri-sodium phosphate, a grease-cutting cleaning agent that removes residual grime, smoke and soot). Next I removed all softened mortar and any remaining stains with a gentle abrasive (fine steel wool) coupled with an under-the-sink, non-abrasive cleaner. 

 

After soaking tiles in TSP, cleaning residual stains with fine steel wool

 

My next challenge was replacing all the broken tiles (about ten percent of the total) with accurate reproductions. It took a long time to find a colour match, plus a workable thickness for the replacement tiles (they don't need to be exactly the same depth as the originals, but they should be close). Then it proved as challenging getting these replacements cut to exact size. Complicating matters, I also needed a handful of partial tiles to fit under the base course of the fireplace surround (note the recess beneath the foot of the brick surround, photo below) a feature that gives the hearth a built-in appearance (the built-in look is central to the entire bungalow idiom - literally one of the principal ways of achieving the period-look).

 

Built-ins are central to bungalow idiom: things should feel fitted to their surroundings

Next came a job that I found really ugly at the time: chipping out sufficient old mortar for a new bed to hold the reset tiles firmly. The old mortar bed was by this point tough and brittle, which caused it to fracture into chips while releasing clouds of fine dust that settled on everything (photo below). I took to masking up with a respirator in order to keep this noxious stuff out of my lungs!

 

Not fun: chipping old mortar out to a depth sufficient to secure new tiles properly

 

Ugly job finally done, now it's on to the work of re-tiling the hearth compatibly

After investing serious sweat equity in excavating old mortar, I was finally positioned to begin resetting tile on a fresh bed. The finesse here would be that back in the bungalow era, hearth tiles were placed almost touching each other, with only a hairline width of mortar separating them (this is why cutting to precise dimensions was so important, which proved elusive in modern times). The close-fitting of tiles formed a key part of the period-look, so I was anxious to capture it for finished effect (a wooden moulding along three sides of the hearth also predisposed the outcome!). But getting the setting right complicated all of my tile placements (the wide grout lines in today's tiling style serves to forgive most minor errors of placement). 

 

 

Cleaned up with TSP and elbow grease, the tiles can finally be reset as they were

The narrowness of the grout lines is obvious from the photo below. However, it would also turn out that I had not set the tiles uniformly level (when you only rarely tile, you are somewhat unprepared for the flow of choices in real-time, so the finickier aspects tend to suffer as a result). On the other hand, minor flaws in setting probably don't leap to the eye of anyone other than the person who carried out the job!

 

 

The thin grout lines between the tiles make the job of setting much more finicky

 

Immediately after grouting the tiles in, excess grout not yet sponged off

Above, the mortar lines are now grouted-in but the excess is not yet sponged off. Getting a grout/tile colour match is essential to the finished look, because a precise match was a given back in the day. Matching tile and grout proved nowhere near as difficult as getting the replacement tiles cut to exact dimensions! Also key was allowing for the slightly greater thickness of my replacement tiles when setting them in the new bed of mortar. Like I said, ultimately it's all about the flow of choices in real time.

 

This brick surface is inherently unstable, showing signs of smoke-scorching to boot

 

Once the hearth tiles had been restored, I could return to the issue of the brick surround. What was the appropriate course of remediation here? The picture above shows the result of my attempts to strip paint off so as to regain a semblance of original brick, resulting in an abused-brick-look that didn't withstand scrutiny. It also reinforced a suspicion I had that there may have been a causal rationale for the original painting of the surround (looking closely at the bricks above the firebox in the photo above, they do seem to have sustained considerable smoke damage). Personally, I have never been comfortable with the abused-brick look on display in some heritage buildings (especially those where the paint has been removed with chemicals, resulting in severe abrading of the original finish). So in the end, I opted to paint the surround again. Note (photo above) the patch lines where the original mortar had deteriorated due to heat effects, necessitating in-filling of these bands. Finding a filler that adheres to the dry surfaces of brick and mortar is tricky, as both of these media quickly draw moisture from whatever compound one uses.

 

A single coat of paint over the previously stripped bricks occasions improvement

 

Having chosen a colour for the fireplace surround in consultation with my design-partner Susan, I began painting the stripped sections of brick in what we felt was a more compatible colour (photo above). I immediately felt pleased with the results, and was keen to see the impact of a full coat.

 

A full coat of paint reveals that the fireplace is intentionally anthropomorphic

A full coat of paint clearly revealed that the fireplace had been contrived to have facial features - which is to say, it was consciously designed to resemble (however abstractly) a recognizable face. In fact, this face is so apparent that once you actually see it, you know it can only have been intentional. Perhaps it is a distant reference to an ancient spirit thought to inhabit hearths inside houses (say Vesta, for example, the traditional Roman hearth goddess, who also happened to be the champion of domestic architecture?). So perchance architect Hubert Savage embedded some sort of trope in his home's living room fireplace.

 

"Vesta is the same as the earth; both have the perennial fire: the Earth and the sacred Fire are both symbolic of home." Ovid, Fasti

 

Smiling now the paint is finally going up, feeling fully engaged in healing action

 

I drew intense satisfaction from disappearing that blunt white coat of paint completely (blank white greets the eye as if the object has been undercoated, but awaits a finishing coat that simply never comes) the more so as this act served to refresh the appearance of a defining feature of the room. It is painstaking work to attempt this sort of rescue - work best approached unhurriedly (say, on Sunday afternoons, during the winter months, with copious glasses of good beer to grease any skid that needs it). The photo below shows me finishing up the second full coat of new paint.

 

 

Sunday afternoons, in winter, with copious craft beers: an ideal work situation

 

Fireplace and mantle are once more an integrated whole, especially now that mirror, bookshelves, firebox floor, hearth and fireplace surround are all either restored or renewed. To my eye, the resulting ensemble keeps faith with the original character and feeling of the room that Hubert Savage designed back in 1913, while accommodating necessary elements of change (painted brick surround, replacement tiles on the hearth, restored built-in mirror, adapted plaster panels under the frieze band, modern entertainments, and so on). The creamy colour adorning the brick fireplace now certainly has, to us at least, a warmer and cozier effect than the strident undercoat-white. A funny thing about the whole white-painting business is that, as a rule, while white has little to say colour-wise, it nevertheless calls attention to itself relentlessly!

 

To my eye at least, once again an integrated whole

 

I hope this essay encourages those who care about heritage to try and establish a better balance between old and new in their own homes. As William Morris noted, echoing his mentor John Ruskin, it is far better to maintain buildings as one goes, by anticipating their needs and intervening promptly as needed, than it is to ignore and neglect them for years on end, only to have to find a way of rescuing and restoring them. Timely, discerning intervention is the best response. So good luck to you with all of your projects! And remember, always look to establish a balance between what's old and new.

 

Books for Looks:

The best source of insight into the North American bungalow and its embedded values remains Robert Winter, The California Bungalow.

The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, by A.D. King is a totally informative global history of the bungalow building form, the first universal architecture. 

Homeplace: The Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries, by Peter Ennals and Deryck W. Holdsworth is also a very good read, with a chapter on bungalows in Vancouver and Victoria.

The evolution of the kitchen environment is covered in any number of articles, including: https://dustyoldthing.com/hoosier-history-photos/,  https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/products/the-rise-of-the-modern-kitchen, and https://20thcenturyhome.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/kitichens-1940s/

 

This article first appeared in my California Bungalow blog, in February of 2011. This was before I landed on the idea of a blog - Century Bungalow - to celebrate the Savage bungalow's persistence for one hundred years. The essay has been completely rewritten and edited for current times, and is now being published in Century Bungalow. Cheers all!

Any comments will reach me at cubbs@telus.net.

 

Relic Boxwood

 

 

 Relic: "an object invested with interest by reason of its antiquity or associations with the past."  

 

 

I've been intrigued by boxwood shrubs for over a quarter century now, especially the older varieties found here and there in front yards and gardens around Victoria. Often they appear as thick-set hedges or path edgings, less frequently as screen plantings or specimen shrubs. To me the mere presence of boxwood near an older house suggests age and settled living, making it feel more homey. Years after first noticing these older plantings, I learned how to transfer them (and by extension, hints of their era) in the form of cloned offspring, a trick leading to a second life in a new locale. While I know little technically about them, the older varieties strike me as having leaf textures, colour variations, and growth habits that differ subtly from today's popular offerings. Some are decidedly coarser in appearance than current more-refined types, while a few are delightfully variegated and have a slight roll to their leaves.

 

 

I first began noticing these relic boxwood on walks taken in older neighbourhoods, where they firmly anchor houses to their surroundings even in small front yards. Most often they appear as fairly coarse hedging, tracing the line where lot meets sidewalk and marking a rectangular edge to the domestic realm while framing an access to the front door. Here they may lend hints of architectural intent to otherwise utilitarian front paths and retaining walls often made of concrete. Less frequently, they can be found serving as specimen shrubs in a border or foundation planting, where they are also likely to be taller and rather more open in appearance. In our more rural suburbs, where lots tend to be larger and sidewalks more rare, box hedging often echoes the property's frontage without defining it sharply. In these situations they serve as screens that help to integrate native species and natural features with human landscape choices, and they are often presented in the looser manner suited to more rural surroundings. 

 

Boxwood are also found tracing the outline of front paths to graphic effect, adding visual interest and vertical dimension to the ground plane. Somehow their mere presence intensifies feelings of long-habitation while adding form and character to the access spaces. Sometimes these front or side yard hedge plantings comprise most or even all of the small garden. 

 

The association of long-habitation with the presence of boxwood plantings likely derives from the fact humans have grown them ornamentally for so long a time and across so many cultures, both in the West (from before the time of the Roman Empire) and in the East, in Korea, China and Japan, where they are prized for their low mounding forms. Boxwood are native to many areas of the globe and have been used to order human landscapes for so long now that they are thought of as the world's oldest ornamental plant. Hence boxwood's presence imparts a sense of age no matter how recent the planting may be.

 

 

Ornamental use of boxwood today is broadly consistent with what we know from written records about its prior use - most notably by wealthy Romans at country villas in the heyday of their empire. Here it served as garden hedging as well as edging for paths, also as gradations between garden levels, and for topiary too - but much of it placed and arranged without great formality. "The literary mentions of box clearly depict the plant's use in high-status ornamental gardens in Italy. Pliny describes in detail how to take cuttings of box for topiary bushes and Pliny the Younger's description of his own garden layout had box hedges separating paths. In fact, the selection of box as an ornamental garden plant has been attributed largely to its suitability for topiary." (L.A. Lodwick, Evergreen Plants in Roman Britain). 

 

Boxwood are broad-leafed evergreen shrubs with a naturally compact appearance, so their shape remains more stable over the course of the seasons. Part of the charm of these slow-growing plants is how readily they take to cultivation with shears, responding with architectural definition and giving year-round garden structure. The more-dwarf varieties can be set out as low geometric shapes, or placed in lines, or treated as garden incidents, elaborating structure with a note of elegance. The taller and ultimately tree-forming varieties of boxwood work well as specimen shrubs whose upward growth can be held in check with regular pruning. Lodwick also notes that box "obscures temporal changes between the seasons", making them attractive to gardeners seeking year-round effects. Boxwood can provide welcome continuity in gardens whose scenic show of flowering plants disappears entirely from late fall through early spring. 

 

 

Use of boxwood by wealthy villa owners declined with the demise of the Roman empire and little is known about ornamental use in the ensuing long period of instability and warfare. With the return of peace coupled with rising wealth in the later middle ages, the old garden habit of edging beds and paths in clipped boxwood revived among prosperous Italians. This easily shaped shrub appears to have an affinity for marking bounds and edges in the hands of ornamental gardeners, a quality this era would take to new extremes. Geometry was then in fashion too, and in aristocratic gardens this led to heightened formality, tight symmetry, and a much-stiffened use of boxwood. From Italy, a fad for stiffly controlled  designs spread across much of Europe, ultimately giving rise to severe parterres in Holland and France (as at Versailles, for example). This trend towards unrelenting confinement of plant growth was intended to symbolize wealth, grandeur and social standing, as it takes vast labour to constrain boxwood in the despotic manner pictured below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

European aristocrats, deploying fleets of gardeners, turned shaped boxwood into a symbol of pomp and splendour in their gardens, while demonstrating man's growing control over 'nature'. Even remote Norway, with a climate inhospitable to box cultivation except for a narrow strip along the southwest coast, initially adopted this stiffened look. Apparently, Norwegian gardeners working on grand gardens elsewhere in Europe brought rooted cuttings back home with them, setting these out parterre-style at the manorial homes of rich merchants. Interestingly, in Norway the vogue for tightly clipped plantings steadily gave way to a more loosened style of arranging and trimming boxwood, a trajectory that continues today (see photo cluster, below right). English gardeners in the seventeenth century also used boxwood fairly stiffly in their knots, mazes and parterres, and topiary uses had long been popular there. Topiary can include both representational shapes (birds, animals, initials, heraldry) and architectural or geometric shapes (pyramids, squares, globes, eggs, etc.). Despite the national inclination to trim box into fantastic shapes or to set it out in tightened parterres and knots, English garden use was never as stiff as the norm in France, Holland and Italy, and a counter tendency towards more-relaxed presentation always had a following. Later, when gardening became a more middle-class pursuit and the cottage-garden style came into fashion among owner-designers, a less-formal use of boxwood spread even more widely through English gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The long human association with boxwood across Europe is due in part to its widespread presence as a native species, the tree version of it providing a hardwood valued for certain specialized articles like fine boxes, combs, carved religious beads and musical instruments. Our pagan forebears also used boxwood branches over ages in their rites and rituals, prizing them for their year-round greenery and the longevity they exemplify. The ancient Gauls chose their long-lived native boxwood tree as a symbol of immortality. Since medieval times these trees have often been allowed to reach great age within settlements (but shaped for a degree of compactness, as above). The relic boxwood pictured in the churchyard above has become a mature tree that's reckoned to be between 500 and 700 years of age.

 

 

The fashion for boxwood bones in garden design was reinforced among prosperous landowners across the entire western world during the seventeenth century, a time of European colonial expansion and rising mercantile wealth. Boxwood reached America in this era too, brought with colonists as a potent reminder of the home landscape - a tangible symbol of continuity with life there. Early American colonists brought slips and roots of boxwood with them to adorn their homesteads in the new land. Boxwood had long stood for 'home', a value it still carries today. In the southern colonies especially, where extensive plantation gardens were often maintained by African American slaves, boxwood readily gave novel form to new-world gardens. George Washington, America's first President, used boxwood extensively to frame the gardens at his Mount Vernon estate, and Thomas Jefferson in turn rooted cuttings from Washington's gardens to frame his estate at Monticello. From early on an American love affair with these shapely, reliable plants has ebbed and flowed repeatedly, dividing allegiance between a stiffer and more formal look and something more relaxed and informal (so likely better suited to garden-making in a previously untamed nature). The 1892 house by San Francisco architect

Willis Polk standing on Russian Hill (photo above) has a foreground planting of boxwood that are used informally. The descent of Lombard Street (photo to the right) is structured by switchbacks edged in trimmed but still-flowing dwarf boxwood.

 

 

 

The use of boxwood in older Victoria gardens is a more recent and far less-self-conscious matter than the stiff look of formal parterres, town settlement here only having come about in the latter half of the nineteenth century. From the turn of the twentieth century and with Victoria becoming a small city, boxwood have regularly been used in local shrubbery gardens, typically as front or side yard hedging that is kept with a certain coarseness of texture. My impressions of this versatile plant grew from noticing one such hedge crowning a low granite wall, first seen back in 1988 at the house at Fort and Linden pictured below. 

 

 

This hedge, which seemed venerable to my eye thirty years ago, has a timeless quality that seems to run with the genre. Once aware of this dynamic synergy between boxwood and stone walls, I began to notice it more often and of course I coveted the specific effect for my own garden.

At some point in the early nineties I happened to notice an older boxwood hidden behind the fence separating our yard from the neighbour's, which is on a panhandle lot subdivided from the original grounds. I realized then that our home garden had at one time hosted boxwood – or, at least, a single specimen - and I immediately wanted to reintroduce it. This old plant was still lovely, semi-shaggy after years of neglect, and distinctly tilted in its direction. Strangely though, not long afterwards  my neighbour chose to rip it out, and then offer it up with its root ball badly mangled. I took it of course, then attempted a hapless rescue by replanting the whole plant in a shady spot and trying my best to keep it watered. I doubted its chances of survival, especially coming into full summer drought, and so was not surprised when it quickly expired. 

 

 

 
Still, I wasn't at all pleased with how this went down, realizing later that I had missed the opportunity to take cuttings from the doomed plant. I suspect I've been making up for that failure ever since! But in fact I was only just at the point of learning how to root cuttings, so lacked the awareness to prompt the thought. However, once the feasibility of the rooting process became more clear, I realized it could easily be applied to any older boxwood that happened to catch my eye.

 

 

 

Some years after the mangling incident, another situation inviting relic box rescue arose and by then I was ready for the challenge. I happened to be working with the Provincial Capital Commission in the mid-1990s, at the time it was overseeing restoration of St. Ann's Academy and renewal of the extensive grounds. St. Ann's is one of those regional institutions with a long history of mixing boxwood into its surroundings. Today boxwood plantings deftly extend a sense of architectural arrangement outwards from the building's vertical lines to the park-like setting pictured below, here aided and abetted by yew, holly and hydrangea (also regionally significant landscape plants).

 

 

 

One day, while touring the grounds with PCC staff, I noticed a trio of shaggy older boxwood hidden in a rarely visited corner at the northwest end of the arboretum. Evidently these mature plants had been overlooked for some time in what was an overgrown shrubbery. I found them fetching, reminiscent of the deceased home boxwood, and so decided to try cloning them for our own garden. There was some urgency to this rescue mission, as a plan to open up a new public access to the grounds at the corner of Humboldt and Blanshard made it very unlikely these oldsters would survive the construction process (and none did). So, with permission, I returned and took several dozen growing tips for rooting. I planted these directly into garden soil in a shady spot, kept them well-watered, and hoped for the best. I was excited to attempt to preserve this token of local garden history, for incorporation one day into our home garden. And this first try at multiplication of relic boxwood was ultimately to have beneficial consequences for design I did not remotely anticipate at the time.

 

 

 

 

It took about a year of keeping these cuttings moist until they developed roots sufficiently strong to support new growth. I lifted the rooted cuttings a year later, transferring them into pots where they grew on happily for many years. As a result, we began playing around with potted boxwood as garden accents, increasingly using them to add visual interest or soften transitions between garden spaces. With adequate watering and occasional light feeding, younger boxwood tolerate pot culture in our climate extremely well.

 

 

 

 

Eventually the rooted cuttings reached a size where planting them out suggested itself. At this point I made the fateful choice to set the St. Ann's boxwood out in curving lines (as pictured above). This we did in a number of other places too, often in proximity to stone retaining walls or other stone features, in order to gain synergy of effect.  

 

 

 

I was surprised how readily these gentle boxwood curves made themselves central to the garden's personality and overall look, so much so that it would be hard to imagine it without their presence now. Many years on, they continue to provide year-round structure while greatly enhancing a mood of age and repose in our woodland garden setting. The success of this foray in boxwood propagation, which led eventually to entirely new planting possibilities, whetted my appetite for more of these relic boxwood. The practice allows the transfer of some mood and magic from an older garden to a more recent one, thus romanticizing the past. No matter, it remains a good way of developing fresh plant material, material that ultimately contributes to intensifying feelings of serenity and repose in any garden. 

 

The older institutional settings dotting our urban region are among the more likely places to encounter larger collections of relic boxwood, sometimes used with greater formality than around homes. These boxwood may be trimmed up into neat rectangular hedges marking the edges of beds or perimeters, grown as specimens to a greater and more natural shape, or used as screens manifesting a residual shagginess. Boxwood add significant texture to any garden or landscape setting and will, varying with closeness of clipping, handily fill in a given shape.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hatley Castle's grounds (pictured above and below) in Colwood sport a major collection of boxwood of different eras, some said to be over a hundred years old. Built in 1908 by Samuel Maclure for James Dunsmuir, heir to the Vancouver Island coal family's fortune, Hatley's immediate surroundings include a captivating Italianate garden with boxwood used as bed edgings. Overall, Hatley Castle's mix of formal and informal elements effectively binds its house, gardens and grounds into a unified whole - a place that feels like its various parts all belong together. This is based on using boxwood extensively to define intermediate spaces as outdoor rooms between the house and its surrounding woodlands. Hatley Castle is unique in the variety of boxwood used in contrasting styles of presentation, from orderly formal parterres and knots to sophisticated architectural sequences on terraces or as grand mounds and point plantings punctuating walkways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above shots of Hatley Castle's collection of boxwood include mounds and chopped pyramids in pots along walks, boxwood edgings in the Italianate garden (said to date from the 1930s), boxwood in a parterre of circular shapes at the front entry of more recent vintage, and rows of older box used as screens, which may date from the earliest days of the building.  

 

Another trove of these relic boxwood is found at Camosun College's Lansdowne Campus, where lines of box hedging frame the perimeter on two sides of its extensive grounds. These long runs of hedging colour up dramatically with the seasons, showing as fresh greens during our often-long spring while turning an eye-catching orange-gold in our typically wet fall and winter. This campus also has an intriguing raised circular parterre of clipped yew and boxwood, echoing the classical symmetry of the Young building, in addition to specimen plantings shaped into larger mounding sentinels. Finally, there are many old boxwood, some hard-clipped and maintained, others badly overgrown and calling out for fresh attention, around the Dunlop mansion (Maclure, 1928) which forms an integral part of the landscaped grounds on this lovely part of the campus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A small collection of relic boxwood also survives on the grounds of the BC Legislature, where a further adventure in plant-transfer was to occur. One day, as a new-minted MLA, I was interviewed in the Rose Garden, a small sunken terrace on the west side of the legislature with a broken circle edged in older box (picture below). It happened these hedges were being pruned that very day, so it was evident exactly how much of their growing tips were to come off. There seemed to be just enough length to take viable cuttings, so I had a word with the gardener before taking a handful from above the trimmed height. I then carried on with the usual process of rooting them in pots.

 

 

 

This approach to multiplying plant material is slow and improvised compared to the ease and certainty of greenhouse propagation, yet it succeeds regularly here in our temperate marine climate. So it happened that by the time my term of office was over, the newbies were nearly ready to be planted out. I decided to place them at the front of our house, along the edge of a stone retaining wall where I felt they would show well. The layout ran along the edge of our parking spot, making a hard right turn for the steps up from it (so requiring an L-shaped planting). I took a playful approach to the challenge and wound up with an unconventional layout. The result, more modernist than traditional, uses boxwood in units or short runs rotated slightly across the centreline of the L (below right). I further complicated matters by introducing a second type of relic boxwood, with a more rounded shape, to punctuate the runs of squared-up box at various points. This complexity has given the result a rather funky, segmented quality overall. The plants have adapted well to their difficult growing site, and the design seems to hang together reasonably well despite its unusual qualities.

 

 

 

 

The habit of collecting older boxwood isn't abating, despite the spatial limitations of our suburban lot. It turns out that many different types of relic boxwood have been used hereabouts over the past century, so new discoveries of older boxwood exemplars are still being made. I find they tend to be less glossy, often more dull in coloration, and coarser and bulkier in habit than today's rather neater offerings. Perhaps more of the older box are in fact 'sempervivens' (native species, so given to taller growth) while the newer varieties have tended to be 'suffruticosa' (dwarf English variants that are naturally mounding and of tighter foliage density)? However that may be, my main interest is to obtain more of the look and feel of prior use by transferring older examples into the home garden.

 

 

 

Boxwood make an attractive choice of garden shrub insofar as they have few special requirements in our climate and soils. While they are said to thrive in full sun, they do seem to prefer sites where they get some relief from direct light for part of the day. It may be that on upland sites like ours boxwood flourish better without full sun exposure. Some varieties will tolerate deeper shade too, but many tend to be more straggly in such settings. It's vital to water them during our prolonged annual drought (last year over three months with no substantial rain!) but not too much. They like soil that drains well and will not put up with having wet feet. There is no need to amend most soils for boxwood (heavy clay excepted) beyond top dressing with leaf compost and possibly mulching (but don't mound either up to the leaf line, as that enables the diseases box is susceptible to). Also on the plus side, their slightly pungent odour and likely bitter taste deter deer from browsing them, a blessing for gardeners facing spiking herds. One caution here: male deer growing new antlers resort to thick shrubs as rubbing points, so any coarser boxwood along a buck's regular path is liable to serious damage. A further plus, to this point at least, is that Victoria's arid summers seem protective against the boxwood blight afflicting moister, more humid climates. There are other diseases that may develop from over-pruning, over-fertilizing and over-watering, but the likelihood is remote if one avoids these practices. However, this may all be different in the future, as a rapidly changing climate rearranges what plants can flourish here (just look at the amount of die-back in our cedars!).

With well-rooted cuttings in hand, the gardener faces choices of form for planting out, coupled with degrees of looseness in trimming. Are they to be grown as specimen plants or as part of a shrubbery, shaped into balls, pyramids or squares, or grouped to run in gently curving or staggered lines? Are they to be left to elaborate their natural billowing form, clipped more closely to emphasize their mounding quality, or rendered into some more fantastical shape via the legerdemain of pruning? Working through these choices is what designing your garden with boxwood is all about. I enjoy using them playfully and without too much preconception, as they can show well in pretty much any form they are given or allowed to take. If you have boxwood as individual specimens in pots, you can use potted samples to try a layout on for fit. A playful approach keeps it interesting for the amateur gardener, who is free to revel in having a supply of plants and just follow novel inclinations in placement. Boxwood do not have to be used in a formal way, and in fact there is a strong case that a more informal and relaxed look better aligns with the natural landscape we inhabit. In the end, as with everything in a garden, one is looking for mixture in an interesting balance.

 

 

 

If you're of a mind to try rooting relic boxwood here in Victoria, you won't need much equipment to get started (other than a pair of secateurs and approval to take cuttings). If there's any delay before the cuttings go into the ground, you need to ensure they remain hydrated (I use plastic bags with wetted paper towels to keep them moist). Boxwood roots quite easily given decent conditions, which in our relatively benign climate can typically be out of doors. (In places with harsher winters, a greenhouse may be needed for rooting cuttings, and the range of cultivars severely limited by the need for hardiness to counter prolonged freezing). Here on the peninsula at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, with weather moderated by proximity to the ocean, the range of usable cultivars is broad and the approach to rooting is to this point wide open.

 

 

 

 

 

However, do be aware that sudden reversion to frigid winter can subject unrooted slips to frost heave, which projects them right out of the soil and means having to resettle them afterwards. I think it is best to take cuttings in the fall when the rains are returning, so that plants lacking roots aren't subject to the added stress of sustained drought. I always select cuttings of vigorous young growth (avoiding older, harder wood), strip off most of the leaves to expose the stems for rooting, use a hormonal rooting compound (#2 is likely best for a shrub like box) to encourage root growth, and employ ordinary garden soil as a medium, amended with a little leaf compost if it is available. I like to put the cuttings straight into pots using holes made with a hand-cultivator, keeping them out of direct sun (dappled shade works well), and ensuring they remain moist (they initially absorb moisture through their stems, so pots can dry out very quickly). After a year or so, you will see signs of fresh growth and then it's either pot them on or plant them out.

 

 

 

 

 

Down the road, I can see myself introducing a screen of relic boxwood at the front of the house where it will help to mask noise and movement on a busy street. Likely this will be left to develop a bit more openly than city hedging. Loosened treatment allows box to develop its bulk more in line with natural growth, yet clipped enough to render its shape intentional. Our garden seems ideal for this looser use, being a piece of woodsy suburbia with many native oaks. As an overall direction for garden design with boxwood, I find the following comments from the American Boxwood Society to be useful:

"Generally speaking the landscape architect...errs in stressing formal effect, whilst the amateurs, seeking to express their personalities, overdo the informal. We believe one's endeavour should be directed, not to creating the garden of one's dream, but to confine one's self to trying to work with the natural setting and environment of your actual garden. Utilize the indigenous growth that can and does thrive where you live. By doing this, your work will blend in with the natural scenery which exists in the area. One cannot improve on nature, and, if one persists in trying to do so, one simply ends up with an artificial oasis." 

 

 

 

Secateurs at the ready, you can now go forth and multiply relic boxwood cuttings to your heart's content. Think of the possibilities of playing around with past time in your own garden today. Be sure to get permission (people do love to give away those cuttings) and remember to enjoy yourself!

 

Articles/links referred to in the text, all available on the web:

Lodwick, L.A., Evergreen Plants In Roman Britain

Master Gardener Program, The Italian Garden

Salvesson, P.H. and Kanz, B., Boxwood cultivars in old gardens in Norway

Salvesson, Kanz and Moe,  Historical Cultivars of Buxus sempervivens revealed in a Preserved 17th century Garden

American Boxwood Society newsletters  http://www.boxwoodsociety.org/

 

This post is adapted from one that first appeared in The Seasoned Gardener blogspot, published in February 2019. It is affectionately dedicated now to the memory of my sister Ann, a talented artist-gardener and floral designer who introduced boxwood to her garden for its shape in Ontario winters.

 

One of the themes explored in this post is humankind's long association with boxwood. The article invokes pagan use of box to symbolize longevity. But, as I inadvertently discovered recently while reading Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, the association with boxwood goes back much further than that! People who study Neanderthal remains have long surmised that these people were also skilled woodworkers, in addition to being highly skilled stone tool-makers. Proof of course has been elusive for the woodworking side, given the susceptibility of wood to breaking down in contact with soil. However, recent excavations at Poggetti Vecchi in Italy - dated at 171,000 years prior to the present - have unearthed worked wooden digging sticks, about which the following is remarked: "Excavations for the construction of thermal pools at Poggetti Vecchi (Grosseto, Tuscany, central Italy) exposed a series of wooden tools in an open-air stratified site referable to late Middle Pleistocene. The wooden artifacts were uncovered, together with stone tools and fossil bones, largely belonging to the straight-tusked elephant Paleoloxodon antiquus. The site is radiometrically dated to around 171,000 y B.P., and hence correlated with the early marine isotope stage 6 [Benvenuti M, et al. (2017) Quat Res 88:327–344]. The sticks, all fragmentary, are made from boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) and were over 1 m long, rounded at one end and pointed at the other. They have been partially charred, possibly to lessen the labor of scraping boxwood, using a technique so far not documented at the time. The wooden artifacts have the size and features of multipurpose tools known as “digging sticks,” which are quite commonly used by foragers. This discovery from Poggetti Vecchi provides evidence of the processing and use of wood by early Neanderthals, showing their ability to use fire in tool making from very tough wood." Here the boxwood is valued for its comparative hardness as a wood, but not overtly sentimentalized in discernible ways. However, this association with humankind is evidently ancient!

Cf:Wooden tools and fire technology in the early Neanderthal site of Poggetti Vecchi (Italy), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 5, 2018