Don and Candy Gagnon have spent more than a decade working on their two acres of gardens, and the work never stops.
WEST GARDINER, Maine — Just turning into the driveway at Candy and Don Gagnon’s home is spectacular.
Walk around the yard, and the spectacle expands.
The roughly two acres of yard surrounding their home are filled with planting beds, lush in trees and plants of just about every type that will grow in Maine. There are tall, older trees that were on the land before they began the gardens, and many others, from dogwoods to blue spruce, that Don and Candy have planted.
Just about every tree is surrounded by flowering plants and shrubs, as well as some flowers. Most of the beds are set off by stone borders and accents, as well as the occasional sculpture and water feature. The overall effect is nearly overwhelming in size, scale and variety.
And it was all created, hands-on, by the two of them.
“It’s like anything else,” Don explained. “Some people like to paint. We like to hardscape, landscape, and in a certain form it’s art, in my opinion.”
The gardens didn’t exist 20 years ago, when the Gagnons decided to build a house on the wooded lot, next to the house they had already built and eventually sold to their daughter. Don was a dentist, and Candy helped run the office, but they still managed to make time to build the large house, mostly by themselves.
Don explains that he worked summers in high school and college building houses, so the work was familiar. Candy says she learned it by doing.
“The house was first and then the stone work,” Don recalled.
Gardens weren’t part of the plan then, but they put in a few trees, and then a few more, then landscaped around them, and the two-decade garden project began.
“The funny thing is, we share the same passion; we both love it. We both love what we do.”
The dental practice was handed off to the Gagnons’ daughter 13 years ago, and they’ve been full-time gardeners ever since. A tractor, and now an excavator, have helped harvest countless rocks from old stone walls in the woods on their land, and gravel has been brought in to build pathways that meander around the many beds. They have built several other buildings as well, which also decorate the landscape.
Aside from family, friends and a few neighbors, all of this beauty was largely hidden from public view because the Gagnons live on a dead-end street. But last summer that changed, when the national Garden Gate Magazine held a contest for favorite gardens.
“And I thought, ‘I think I’m going to enter that. We might have a chance,'” Candy said. “I took 20 pictures, sent them in.”
Her husband was, he admits, skeptical.
“Because it encompassed the U.S. and Canada, and I didn’t think we would be creating that kind of interest,” Don said.
Candy didn’t buy the argument.
“I said to myself, looking around, ‘How many people do what we do? Two people?’ And I thought we had a good chance.”
She was right. Last summer, the editor of the magazine showed up with photographers and a video crew, and told Candy and Don they had won the reader’s choice award. Their gardens would be featured in the magazine—including the cover.
There was also a YouTube video created by the magazine, which Candy said has received thousands of views.
“It was amazing,” she said modestly.
Gardening fame hasn’t lessened the work. Both still devote much of every day—spring, summer, and fall—to tending and improving their gardens.
Expanding may be a problem, as most available spots have already been taken. That includes a small pond with a waterfall tumbling from stones, with the pond surrounded by plantings and a stone wall. There is also a larger, less formal pond with a rock-lined springtime stream that helps control runoff and also adds a spectacular feature to the overall landscape.
They work each day, starting with a walk around the property to decide what tasks need to be done. The work day ends, they say, in late afternoon when they assess the progress.
“A lot of people think we’re a little wacky,” Don admitted. “You know what I mean, it’s a little eccentric to do all this stuff.”
“Yeah,” Candy said, “people think we’re nuts. That’s OK.”
In winter—hard to call it the off-season—Don builds furniture and cuts and splits firewood for themselves and family. Candy makes garden sculptures and decorative objects.
And, of course, she waits eagerly for the seed catalogs to arrive. The next gardening season starts with seed orders, planting, and the greenhouse.
She has a simple explanation: “There’s always work to be done.”
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