Suzanne and Patrick Bulmer are crazy about heritage.
For almost 30 years they have been knowledgeably and meticulously restoring their handsome, pre-1913 home in Gordon Head.
They added a pergola at the front door, took off the roof to create a spacious master bedroom in the former attic, renovated bathrooms, redesigned the kitchen and built an elegant new staircase in the entry — all while keeping to the home’s original Arts and Crafts style.
Outside, they added plinths and antique jardinières, a greenhouse, gravel pathways, climbing roses, a huge windmill palm — and a few years ago, they completed a uniquely challenging project.
They took apart, transported to their property and reassembled a 90-year-old summerhouse, which Suzanne has decorated with a large dining table she found at auction, wicker chairs, a couple of sofas, antique lamps and huge garden bouquets.
The project took shape after they were contacted by the Saanich Heritage Foundation and told about the near-wreck of a building, a summerhouse that had stood on the old Queenswood estate (off Arbutus Road) for almost a century, and was facing demolition.
“It had fallen into disrepair, so we bought it for a dollar and took it all apart,” said Patrick, who saved all the granite from the foundation and rebuilt it from the ground up.
“The floor and roof were rotten, so I put on a new roof and built a new floor out of wood salvaged from an old gymnasium at Work Point Barracks,” in Esquimalt.
The result looks utterly at home in the Bulmers’ three-quarter-acre garden — a landscape that is being featured in this year’s Conservatory of Music Mother’s Day garden tour. (See page C9 for more information.)
Suzanne said the property has been vastly altered since they moved in 26 years ago.
“There wasn’t much here when we bought it … mostly metre-high grass and old fruit trees that died or had to be taken out.”
The home, too, was a little sad, having sat vacant for a year or two while a developer tried to rezone the land.
“The garden has evolved over the years, and is still evolving,” she said, noting her husband works non-stop on the house and garden while also running a business full time.
“He is passionate about what he does… our friends get dizzy just watching him.”
And while neither of them is a master gardener, “and we don't know the names of every plant, I think it’s a beautiful garden with lots to intrigue people.”
Invisible from the road, the house sits toward the ocean side of the property, and all kinds of plants thrive in the warm microclimate.
“We can grow things here that don’t survive in other parts of Victoria … it’s at least five degrees warmer here than on Dallas Road,” said Patrick, who used to own Garden City Landscaping, and started running his own gardening business while still in junior high.
He also spent five years as a member of the Victoria Heritage Foundation, doing grants and inspections; was a member of the Hallmark Society for five years; and is owner of Waterglass Studios where, for the past 30 years, he has specialized in repairing quality antiques as well as custom designing and manufacturing new and distinctive lighting, doorbells, copper range hoods and classic hardware.
“We’ve always been involved in heritage and the work never ends with a home like this,” he explained with a grin. “And we are in the garden every chance we get, from early morning to late at night.”
One of the Bulmers’ most extensive projects was the creation of a spacious master suite in the home's former attic, where Vintage Woodworks fabricated precise replicas of all the windows on the main floor.
It stretches almost 20 metres along the length of the house and includes a library at one end, spacious ensuite and closets, a large bedroom and sitting room at the other end.
“We still need to do some finishing here and there,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s typical, like the shoemaker’s kids who always need shoes….”
They also redid all the home’s plumbing and wiring, the bathrooms and the entire kitchen, where they built new cabinets using wood salvaged from the ceilings.
Originally, the home, which was part of a larger estate, was surrounded by a circular drive and its front entry faced the water. But the Bulmers preferred garden to asphalt, so they created a large patio on the waterside, built a greenhouse on the south side, and turned the rest of the ring into pathways and plantings.
They also added a new entry on the road side of the home and it’s indistinguishable in style and vintage from the rest of the house.
It features a vine-drenched pergola, wooden staircase and lavish amounts of stone that came from the old Borden house, on the former Borden Mercantile property on upper Quadra Street.
“The main floor of that huge old place was granite and when it was demolished I bought three big truckloads of granite,” said Patrick, who also used the stone for walls and new stone pillars at the gate.
There are many things they love about their heritage designated home but one of the most important was their fondness for Jack Rowe, who lived next door until his death recently, in his 80s.
“Jack grew up in this house and was a good mentor, a very knowledgeable man,” said Patrick.
“He’d come over and show us pictures of the place in the early days, tell us stories, things like how he used to sleep out on the porch even during the winter …
“That’s one of the things that has been most special about this place.”
