{"id":23019,"date":"2019-02-21T12:54:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T17:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23019"},"modified":"2019-02-21T12:54:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T17:54:17","slug":"57-years-on-variety-is-still-the-spice-of-david-and-dierdre-tomlinsons-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/57-years-on-variety-is-still-the-spice-of-david-and-dierdre-tomlinsons-life\/","title":{"rendered":"57 years on, variety is still the spice of David and Dierdre Tomlinson\u2019s life"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strung around her neck on a leather strip were the eyeballs of former lovers.
\nThis was, without thinking, the first words that came out of Dierdre Tomlinson\u2019s mouth when working as a palliative care volunteer when a rather dour patient looked up from his chair, spotted her necklace, and grumbled, \u201cAnd what are those?\u201d
\n\u201cI was trying to cram the words back into my mouth,\u201d Dierdre recalls. \u201cAfter what seemed like a long, silent pause, he said, \u2018I thought there would be more.\u2019\u201d
\nIn reality, for the past 57 years, Dierdre and David Tomlinson, who welcome hundreds of people to their famed Merlin\u2019s Hollow garden each year, have only had eyes for each other.
\n\u201cI have more of a sense of humour than David,\u201d Dierdre confides as David leaves the kitchen table to take a phone call which, as it turns out, was a call to arrange an upcoming engagement in Dierdre\u2019s busy social schedule. \u201cHe\u2019s very interested in scientific bird research and things like that, but I am more varied and different in that way.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m not so interested in people,\u201d David adds with a wry smile, phone call concluded and Dierdre\u2019s concert date in Downtown Toronto firmed up for this week. \u201cDierdre is very interested in people. She likes people and gets on with them, and I get on with them when it suits me.\u201d
\nFortunately for the people of Aurora, those times when it suits David are frequent as they welcome hundreds of people through their famed Merlin\u2019s Hollow garden each year, and as David, 84, continues his advocacy work in Town for the advancement of the Ivy Jay Nature Reserve and the Aurora Arboretum, but both halves of the whole agree that their differences keep the spark in their relationship.
\nThis Valentine\u2019s Day, The Auroran asked the well-known just what makes them tick after 57 years.
\nIt\u2019s a relationship of mutual respect and understanding, of shared and varied interests, but, perhaps most importantly, a friendship that continues to go from strength to strength.
\nDierdre, 77, and David came from similar backgrounds, both from what Dierdre describes as \u201cvery low, working class families\u201d in the United Kingdom, Dierdre from London and David from Manchester.
\nAfter first crossing paths by chance and thinking little of it at the time, they truly met for the first time in a rather unusual way: stopped at a traffic light amid the hustle and bustle of London.
\n\u201cI was travelling to college on my scooter in busy London traffic when I stopped at a red light,\u201d Dierdre recalls. \u201cAnother scooter came up with two men on it, and it was David\u2019s friend driving. David said, \u2018Nice night, isn\u2019t it?\u2019 I agreed and went onto the next red light. He then said, \u2018Warm for this time of year.\u2019 I agreed and went on. This happened for eight traffic lights and then he finally said, \u2018Fancy coming for a coffee?\u2019 I thought, why not?\u201d
\nThe trio parked on the side of the road, found an Italian coffee house and spent the night chatting.
\nDavid and Dierdre were engaged three months later.
\n\u201cThe next week when I went home, I told my mother what had happened and she said, \u2018You went out with strangers like that? I said I knew I was safe because there were two of them. Such was my naivety!\u201d
\nDavid says it\u2019s a good question what initially made him spark a conversation with the young lady on the next scooter. He had just come out of what he describes as an unhappy relationship with another woman and \u201cwasn\u2019t keen on jumping through the same hoops again.\u201d
\n\u201cBut, it all worked out,\u201d he says, looking over to Dierdre. \u201cIt was a very lucky break, wasn\u2019t it, love? It was sheer luck.\u201d
\nWhile they had similar family backgrounds, they came into the marriage with different life experiences. While David was not a scholar, starting as a gardener\u2019s apprentice at the age of 12 before working his way up the ladder to eventually become a renowned landscape architect, Dierdre had decidedly different interests.
\nAfter her father died when she was just three, she was considered an \u201cOfficer\u2019s Orphan\u201d and between the ages of five and 18 was sent to a boarding school paid for by the army. She went from working class to the middle class, she said, and left school with a yen to be a teacher, pursuing her passion at the Froebel Institute.
\nAfter their marriage in 1962, the Tomlinsons had two daughters \u2013 Beth and Melinda \u2013 before David\u2019s scooter-driving friend invited them to come and visit him at his new home in Canada in 1974.
\nHe and David eventually formed a business partnership and the family of five \u2013 including dog Lucy \u2013 were bound for Aurora.
\nThey first settled into a house on Wellington Street \u2013 unfurnished as the furniture they had sent on was a casualty of a warehouse strike.
\n\u201cWe arrived on August 14,\u201d says Dierdre, \u201cwhich is David\u2019s birthday, and we couldn\u2019t get anything out until Hallowe\u2019en.\u201d
\n\u201cWe were in this big empty house and that is what really impressed me,\u201d David adds. \u201cWhen our furniture arrived, we already had a TV, tables, chairs and beds. People would come and say, \u2018I\u2019ve got a spare bed. Use that.\u2019 Or, \u2018We have a spare TV in the basement.\u2019 In the end, we had a houseful of furniture in those days. Canadians were very generous and that\u2019s what really made us stay. We haven\u2019t lived anywhere else.\u201d
\nGenerosity might have been a factor in staying put, but they were more than willing to pay this generosity forward. In a few short years, they moved out of their digs on Wellington and found a new home on Centre Crescent, Dierdre\u2019s only stipulation to the real estate agent being a small old house in good shape on a large lot.
\nHere, David\u2019s background as a landscape architect came into bloom as he set about transforming the square lot into a series of three very different, expansive gardens. Dubbed \u201cMerlin\u2019s Hollow\u201d, the gardens became renowned after they decided to open up their gardens for free to share them with the community.
\nDavid, still insisting he\u2019s the antithesis of a people person, although not quite convincingly, attributes the idea to open the garden entirely to Dierdre.
\n\u201cAbout a year in, I thought it looked so great we had to share it,\u201d says Dierdre. \u201cDavid reluctantly agreed to do that and last year was our 37th year of doing free open days. At one time, we used to have over a thousand visitors each time we opened because there were not that many gardens around that were open to the public. They loved it and kept coming back.\u201d
\nThey not only came back, but wanted to see if their own thumbs were green by buying plants from the couple. They had little money at the time and decided this would be the perfect side hustle.
\n\u201cWe did that for 25 years,\u201d she says, \u201cand it helped put in hedges and fencing.\u201d
\nNowadays, much of the garden work falls on Dierdre as David continues his work with such organizations as Nature Aurora, the Aurora Community Arboretum, and fostering what has become a passion project, making the Aurora Wildlife Park on Wellington Street East (formally the Ivy Jay Nature Reserve) a reality.
\nSo, after 57 years, how does their garden grow?
\n\u201cWe enjoy each other\u2019s company,\u201d says Dierdre.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re best friends, really,\u201d agrees David. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have different things that you do separately. Half of the things you do together, but have some things you do on your own \u2013 then, when you meet at the end of the day, you can talk about it. One of the important things is when you do get cross with each other, which you do, don\u2019t go to bed feeling cross. Don\u2019t go to bed angry. Sort it out and then sleep.\u201d
\n\u201cDavid,\u201d interjects Dierdre with a laugh, \u201cyou really should write a book! I find with a lot of young people, marriages last for such a short time. Get to know them well before you get married. See how much you share that would work for a while.
\n\u201cI said to David, \u2018You\u2019re not perfect, but I couldn\u2019t live with perfection. It would show me up!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Strung around her neck on a leather strip were the eyeballs of former lovers. This was, without thinking, the first words that came out of Dierdre Tomlinson\u2019s mouth when working as a palliative care volunteer when a rather dour patient looked up from his chair, spotted her necklace, and grumbled, \u201cAnd what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/2019-02-14-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Zh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-05 18:05:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}