It started with a yellow rose
Doris & Maurice Breadner of Meaford
Maurice ploughed the first garden: a long row where she planted lupins. Now they are everywhere each spring. Photos by Heather Breadner. Story by Dorothy Dobbie.
D
oris and Maurice Breadner met at a dance. Like some flowers, it took a while for the seeds
that were sown that day to get started, but once they did, it was for a lifelong commitment. They were married 50 years ago this August. Maurice and Doris call the Bread-
Maurice and Doris: They met at a dance. 8 • Home and Gardener Living
ner family farm home, where Maurice still raises beef cattle and sheep on 183 acres. They raised four children in the 100-year-old farmhouse near Meaford: Allen, the eldest, now lives in Panama; Sheryl and her twin Darryl, who has two boys of his own; and Heather, the youngest, who is raising four grandchil- dren in Owen Sound. Of the six grand- kids, one of Heather’s daughters is the only girl. They range in ages from eight to 17. Even though she was very busy with kids and the life of a farm wife, Doris
started a small garden with just one yellow rose. Her first flower bed was a foundation garden near the house; she was learning as she went along. Doris lost her own mother at age six and a half, so her early role model was an aunt who used to garden. For Doris, though, the longing for a flower garden ran deep, wherever it came from, and as the kids grew up and left home, she turned her attention to developing a place where her passion for flowers could run rampant. In the eighties, she decided to go for
it big time, asking Maurice to plough a long flower bed near the fence. She fell in love with lupins at an early stage, so a lupin bed quickly developed and is now 150 feet long by eight feet wide. It is arranged in an ell-shape and in June their jewel-like colours fill her heart with joy. She has allowed them to go
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