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When artist, gardener and teacher Maria Ojascastro bought the historic 1926 farmhouse complete with a small barn in the back four years ago she found a house in which she could be vital, creative and happy. The small barn behind the house became her first set-apart art studio, a pure joy for this longtime artist. “I never thought in my life thought I’d have like a 500 square-foot art studio,” she says.

Ojascastro was looking in the city for an older home when her brother discovered the house and barn in a historic neighborhood in Kirkwood. She made an appointment to see it. She toured the barn first. “I envisioned the barn not only as a studio, but becoming this magical place of food, friends and places to make art. I knew I could invite people to be creative here. I imagined it as a meditative place to start my mornings. It even had a wood-burning fireplace and air conditioning. That was even before I got into the main house,” she says.

When she got to the main house, she was hooked. “It felt like home immediately,” she says. “It’s a tiny house, one and a half stories, but the living room floods with natural light, so it felt much bigger. It was all about sunshine and openness and this energy in the space — it was all me,” she says.

She saw the hard work ahead to transform the green grass grounds full of weeds into a colorful retreat with native plants and cutting flowers and embraced it. She also knew it would be the home where her twenty-something sons would launch themselves into the world, and a home where she could comfortably grow older.

She also knew she would expand her living space into a lush garden retreat. This seasoned gardener learned her skills as a child. “I think I inherited my gardening skills. My grandpa was a farmer, and my dad, Alejandro Ojascastro, always grew food. He had a green thumb, even though he was a doctor. Growing up I watched him,” she says.

Her mother, Emma, taught a young Maria how to make really good Filipino rice. “Most dinners had vegetables harvested from my dad’s garden and my mom’s perfect sticky rice,” she says.

Today, Maria and her sons take good Filipino dishes to a Filipino family picnic that happens every year.

Although this artist and teacher had always gardened at each of her homes, enough of the old farm magic remained in the Kirkwood farm yard to move her to new adventures. She planted a cutting garden of native plants and annuals that she turned into a business. She now offers bouquet subscriptions from her micro-farm.

“I have so many flowers I did one Facebook post last spring about bouquet subscriptions just to see if there was interest,” she says. The response was overwhelming. “People love getting my bouquets. It’s meaningful summer fun for me to do, and it fits in with my philosophy of moving forward where everything I do has to be joyful, meaningful and manageable,” she says.

She even designed her garden to be manageable, no easy task with a big garden. “I am shocked that my garden barely looks like it went through a heat wave, but I created it to be low maintenance. I could tell where water was coming off my property and designed my plantings accordingly. I barely water the cutting garden because it holds water well. All the rain we got this spring — it’s held in the good soil as if by magic.”

She’s made her relationships with her sons and friends, her work, her home and her art joyful, meaningful and manageable. “I’m excited about my art opening this fall at the Five Oaks Community Center on Warson Road. I’m saying no to most teaching gigs for the next three months. I’ll be on an artist retreat until the show opens,” she says.

She’ll continue with her teaching, which is another passion for this active woman. “My main passion projects for teaching are still the Prison Performing Arts and teaching at the Cancer Support Community. I still teach classes at PALM Health, at COCA and at Marnie’s Creative Outlet. I also teach private lessons — after my art show in the fall.”

Ojascastro had always hoped to age in place, and the set-up of her new home allows for that. “Even though there’s only four steps from the driveway to the front porch, if I did end up with mobility problems, I could roll my wheelchair into the studio because it has a flush threshold with French doors. I would need to put a bathroom in the barn to live there, but for now it’s no big deal. Now I have a one-minute commute to my art studio,” she says.