it was just a stairway and he built the retaining wall and i saw this academy so what does that mean it was a private academy any two hundred fifty three but there's also a school i think that that was public as a private right it was only a school for about thirty years and the town owned it they used it briefly for a town hall and even for a school i think they had a fire in their school and one point the town sold all of their small buildings that they didn't want to keep and this was one of them and my grandfather bought it so what did he do oh he was an artist they were both artists and my grandmother was quite a gardener gardener started  two years ago now they started it so that would have been you know the early fifty's when all the patios and the stone walls my grandfather built and my grandmother did most of the plantings and i've had a lot of it rebuilt with the same stuff and then did you move in and take over yes i moved in six or seven years ago and i started working in the front one section at a time it was overgrown with things like the  always interested in living outside and having places to be to do things besides working in the garden my grandfather actually built this retaining wall to hold the material which we're standing on when he dug the basement by hand so a lot of people think this is actually a barn foundation but it's actually the stones which he pulled out of there and built this area and also in this area this is one of my favorite plants this is called  and as you can see it's just huge in the majestic and what i really like about it is it stays fairly contained besides seedlings here and there it doesn't spread like a lot of the plants that look like this do and it needs a lot of and so do you really your sole authority plan yes and yes i consider a specimen see this is where the told the water after the rain and this is i think why they call it cup plant and i have seen butterflies come to take a drink out of this and it hasn't rained for a few days and there is still water in there which is sort of interesting and what does all this is one of my favorite trees this is a purple fountain beach and i also have a shorter version over there but it's going to get quite tall but i like the dark leaves in the in the form of it hanging down sort of movie how do you uses this  area i don't use it as much as my other area but this is more drinks in the evening on a hot summer's night it's sort of cool over here this is another one of my favorite plants it's a contorted larch which i got at katie's falls nursery one of my favorite places to go  and that corner there's also a weeping camperdown elm which will eventually get pretty big it's like a shrub grafted on elm tree which gives it that weaving look this is one of my favorite plants my grandmother always like this it's amaranth this called love was bleeding and it was very popular i think victorian plant and i think it's just so unusual this is where you eat breakfast and dinner if it's nice enough out  staycation and having a vacation at home you know creating your own private paradise south of france ok so you have no travel expenses to spend that right now and that's a nice idea yeah place yeah i can see that well this is the backyard and i say the first area that i started working on is the vegetable garden so i can take you there when i grow lots of garlic and tomatoes and lettuces things try to go for things that deer aren't going to eat even though they still try everything i like the idea of having an ornamental vegetable garden oh that's a new concept an ornamental vegetable garden you know they have to be edible and nice yes mostly edible i do have a definition for cut flowers are not edible at all this is the next project or i will be putting in a formal garden and i'll be taking out all the plants which i wish to keep and then so you're ripping this up and i'll be ripping it all out and sharing with people which i have been and i'm going to put a pea gravel pathway going straight through here so when you pull up the driveway you'll have a view into the