Although he has been a radio, television and print celebrity for a couple of decades, gardening expert Mark Cullen doesn't necessarily know everything about agrarian life.
Like how to rebuild an old barn, for example.
And when he sought help, he got a surprise. "I thought I knew people in the building industry," he says. "But I didn't know anybody that was interested in reconstructing with old building material; they just can't be bothered."
Now, the 150-year-old barn, which his father Len bought for "a hundred bucks" when Highway 401 was eating its way through farmland near Victoria Park Avenue in the 1950s, sits proudly to the south of his brand new home north of the city. Thanks to Mennonites, of course.
The furnace is a real highlight of the room.
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But a little backtracking is in order.
The barn in question had been a hardworking member of the gardening retailer Weall & Cullen — which his father bought from John Weall in 1947 — until the business was sold to Sheridan Nurseries in 2003. It was the place where their coolers were located and the family did potting and maintenance. Then, when the company was sold and it seemed certain it would be torn down, Mr. Cullen's wife, Mary, suggested they move it to land she'd inherited from her father — a field full of soybeans.
Enter the Mennonites. In 2004, Conestoga Carpenters from St. Jacob's had it back up and shipshape in three short weeks.
While Mr. Cullen says he would have been happy with just "a hobby barn," something about the breathtaking views of the Oak Ridges Moraine suggested that perhaps there ought to be something else located there . . . like maybe a house.
"But we always said we'll never build a house," laughs Mr. Cullen while seated in the living room of his six-month-old residence, the sun setting over his shoulder through large west-facing windows. Avoiding the inconvenience of architects and the myriad decisions that come with a custom home, the family instead chose to explore prefabricated designs. Although they found a Cape Cod design they liked and purchased the working drawings, they decided to hire a local (and highly recommended) builder, Rob Hurlburt, to build the 4,000-square-foot, five-bedroom red brick house. Construction began in April, 2005, "and concluded probably the day before we came in," he chuckles.
While large, the home's stance and building materials make it far less intrusive on the landscape; it doesn't thrust up aggressively like the armies of "monster homes" that march ever closer to the moraine from the Greater Toronto Area.
"We just didn't want to have a house that stuck out and looked ostentatious, so that's how we ended up with the design and the brick colour; it sort of echoes the land," he says.
"You drive around here, and there are a lot of new homes, and a lot of them just don't, in our opinion, look like they belong."
In addition, Mrs. Cullen was vehement that, wherever possible, Mr. Hurlburt use the simplest materials possible.
Eventually, rather than presenting two or three items to her, he'd just bring her the plainest one and say something like, "I thought you'd like this," she remembers with a smile.
Environmental concerns were foremost in the couple's minds, since, as Mr. Cullen points out, building is, by nature, "somewhat contradictory to being environmentally responsible. So one of the things that we did is put in a bamboo floor."
A renewable resource, it has performed well above expectations, as has the geothermal heating and cooling system they had installed. Polar Bear Energy Inc. in Markham had all the land it needed behind the Cullen house to bury a 60-ƒ|by 200-foot patch of looping pipe seven feet underground, where the temperature remains constant at about 9 degrees (48 Fahrenheit) year round. Basically, the system pushes out a glycol solution that brings this "free" heat back into the home, where it's bumped up to warm the house in winter or used for cooling in summer.
Mrs. Cullen, an avid knitter (she runs a yarn store), chose all natural fibres for the drapes as well as the home's 100-per-cent-wool carpeting, which was shipped from the Netherlands.
The home is an eclectic jumble of cozy Canadiana furniture, inherited mostly from Mrs. Cullen's father, John Farintosh, who loved old wood so much he collected it "the same way people collect stamps," Mr. Cullen jokes.
But furniture, antique or otherwise, is the last thing on his mind. Standing in what he calls "the grotto" — an area leading down to his side door that's made up of carved fieldstone his father collected from old building foundations — thoughts of landscaping are what's really dancing in his head.
"It's really excited me to be able to have this blank canvas," he beams. "Two years ago, a field of soybeans, not one tree, nothing on this land — it was flat as a pancake — and to just start with that and create something with it that's beautiful and attracts wildlife and that we feel at home in, that's the goal."
Maybe after he's done with that, he'll learn how to build a barn.
Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Sunday mornings.
