Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Preparations are underway for the fourth Palouse Home and Garden Tour to be June 23.
The benefit for the Holy Trinity Church, owned by the Whitman County Historical Society, will be the latest tour over the past seven years.
The itinerary for 2012 will include six homes and gardens in Palouse, including a perennial favorite garden and a turn-of-the-century restored farmhouse.
Funds raised will go to replacing siding shingles in the chapel, as well as possibly contributing to the re-leading of more of the 1895 church’s original stained-glass windows.
Over the years, as the church has needed repairs, volunteers have put together the Home and Garden Tours.
“This will be the last one,” said Pat Flansburg, organizer and member of the Historical Society board. “We will probably stop now. We’ve kind of used up our resources here in Palouse.”
This year’s locations feature John and Diane Cooper’s 1893 house on the hill while Judy and Ben Finch’s garden returns as a favorite.
“But it changes,” said Boone. “She keeps changing it. It’s so special people keep asking for it.”
House
restoration
John and Diane Cooper’s hilltop 1893 farmhouse wilted for decades before the couple bought it in 1992.
The restoration has continued ever since.
“I’ve been working on the house for 20 years,” said Diane. “The person we bought it from said if we didn’t buy it, he was going to burn it down. It’s just one of those houses that when I saw it I had to have it.”
First, a squatter needed to be removed.
It was December 1992 when the couple bought the one-acre place for $35,000. They had to put a foundation under it so they soon needed to replace all of the plumbing.
They continued to live elsewhere while work continued.
“When we got a flushing toilet was the turning point,” Diane said. “We just camped up here before we could call it living.”
The tasks continued, room by room, for years. In the summers, Diane worked outside.
“There was nothing outside but a lot of weeds,” she said.
Now, as the tour approaches and the public debut, the Coopers undertook a few more projects in earnest, including installation of a brick sidewalk and refinishing floors in the basement.
“Everything is just dusty and dirty after the floor and sanding,” she said. “Just a lot of stuff.”
The Coopers’ house has six rooms downstairs and four upstair bedrooms, along with what the Victorians called “a sleeping porch.”
The long history of the home includes a period when it was a commune which kept indoor goats.
Behind the house is a barn which John Cooper is restoring. It will not be part of the tour.
John and Diane raised two children who were used to all of the changes in the house.
“In the beginning it was a little embarrassing for them,” said Diane. “It hadn’t had a paint job in 50 years.”
As the tour date approaches, Diane said there is much more work to be done.
“Garden, garden, garden, clean, clean, clean,” she said.
Perennial
garden
The extensive, half-acre garden of Judy and Ben Finch will be another stop on the tour. Judy has been busy preparing for the public once again.
Her garden has been featured twice before, while this year it will have the addition of a white garden and studio.
The two beds of fragrant white flowers are made of mini white roses, white lilies, white Nicotiana and framed with boxwood, a green plant. They stake a claim near where a 135-foot rotting Ponderosa Pine was removed five years ago.
Judy has been in the garden an average of four hours a day this spring.
“Weeding and planting, pruning and fertilizing,” she said.
For three hours a day, Marcus Halligan from the local Calvary Chapel men’s home helps.
Judy’s garden grows on a former horse pasture which the Finch’s used to rent out. Initially, after the horses were gone, Ben just mowed the natural grass for a few years, then took the fence down and planted a perimeter screen of shrubs.
Soon a garden came to be.
“It just evolved on its own, it just happened,” Judy said. “I never set out to create a garden this big. My husband has said on more than one occasion I should’ve never been taken the fence down,” she added with a laugh.
The plants draw interest from more than just people.
Every year in spring, deer come in and eat the new growth.
“My philosophy is to try to plant so there is enough for everybody, because there’s no way to stop them otherwise,” said Judy.
On Tuesday, Judy and assistant Halligan planted David Austin English roses.
“I always say, I’m a nicer person in the garden,” she said, of its relaxing effect.
Other homes on this year’s tour will include a 2007 place with views of Ringo, Angell and Kamiak Butte, a 1960s rancher with a 2009 country chic update and a late 1940s clinker brick home.
“We give the people a map and a ticket and they go,” said Boone.
She said the group hopes to raise $3,000.
Holy Trinity Chapel, which is on the Washington State and National Historic Registers, was bought by a group of people in 2003, who raised money for it, then donated it to the Historical Society.
“It’s very quaint and charming and old-world,” said Boone.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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