Copyright 1993 Sharon Crawford

Adam and Eve peer out from the stained glass window of a gazebo in the newest garden area. Here, David planted Eight bats and 1,500 different varieties of perennials keep David and Deirdre Tomlinson hopping at Merlin’s Hollow, their English country garden in Aurora.

It’s a labor of love for the Tomlinsons, who bought the .405-hectare (1-acre) property in 1978. In those days, it sported a little grass, a 3.6-metre(12-foot) high maple tree, a few irises and peonies and a 1930s-style house built from a kit.

Since 1980, the Tomlinsons have opened their garden to the public. They now draw an estimated 3,000 visitors a year.

David, a landscape architect, divided the garden into sections linked by winding walkways and four wooden archways. The maple tree, soaring higher and higher, serves as the focus of the woodland area. Lily-of-the valley, trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpit and early-flowering clematis from Malaya and Japan bed at its feet.

“This is my Alpine garden, my rock garden,” David says, pointing to the next area.

It’s named “Melinda’s Alpine Garden,” after daughter Melinda, who paid for its construction. More than 300 plants, including the weeds, says David, are rooted in .91 metres (3 feet) of gravel with little soil.

their fragrant garden of shrubs, trees and perennials.

Other areas contain the columbine from Munstead Abbey in England, the Flame Vine from Chile, and the Fair Maids of France from Newfoundland’s Oxen Pond Memorial Gardens.

Merlin’s Hollow flowers from snow to snow, peaking in July.

“I’ve found the more different plants we grow, the more (different) insects we attract,” Deirdre says.

Then there are those eight bats that swoop down at dusk for their daily dinner of insects.

“We’ve just put a bat box on the chimney so they can roost,” explains Deirdre.

The couple spend all their spare time in the garden, where David plants and Deirdre labels.

Every year their friend, Bob Adams, a noted English gardener, mails them 1,000 seed packets. David freezes some for another year and starts the rest on another friend’s property.David plants the seeds in lines “so that they can grow and get larger, and can mature without any competition.” The following year he brings them home and plants them right in the garden or in flower pots.The Town of Aurora dumps three truckloads of leaves for their garden compost and mulch.

Merlin’s Hollow is in Aurora’s east end.