Siamandas.ca

Winnipeg In Bloom

Written
and
Produced
By George Siamandas

GARDENER’S VOICES

You do it because this is something you have to do; you need to do it.

A garden is a gift that you can give to other people, and to yourself.

A garden is a place where the human soul and the earth connect.

If I was to let go, my passion for gardening would be endless.

INTRODUCTION
NAR: In gardens throughout the city, from the small vest pocket gardens of the West End, to the large expansive riverside properties of the lush suburbs, Winnipeg gardeners enjoy another banner year of beauty. With their small miracles of nature, Winnipeg’s gardeners are making the world a sweeter place one garden at a time.

An ancient Chinese proverb says:

If you would be happy for a week,
take a wife,
If you would be happy for a month,
kill your pig,
But if you would be happy for a lifetime plant a garden

IRIS KENNEDY:
GARDENER, CHARLESWOOD
Gardening is very important to my wellbeing. It gives me peace creativity and just a feeling of exhilaration when I am walking through my yard first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.

My garden is over an acre from the front right down to the river. My favourite area of my garden is the gazebo where I have my coffee and read my paper every morning. And my second favourite would be the riverbank with my grandchildren and friends having a glass of wine and lighting a fire.

Beauty is the Mistress,
the gardener Her slave.
- Michael P. Garofalo

DEB ASKIN:
GARDENER, ST VITAL
I love gardening because it gives you a sense of peace. It gives you a sense of creativity, it’s an opportunity to nurture things, help them grow. It’s an opportunity to be one with nature. To meet folks, to be out in the front yard and to have people come by and ask questions about the garden is one of the greatest thrills that I have.

Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate what a difference it makes to be out in the garden until you have had a difficult day. The mornings here are glorious. You can smell the dew and you really have a sense of just what kind of tropical paradise can be created here even in Winnipeg. You need to be willing to go with just what nature offers you that’s what makes a good garden.

When children come to the yard to visit the first time, we take them to the herb garden and they taste different things. It’s really amazing. For me gardening is really about the beginning of life it’s about spring time, it’s really about beginnings. It really does renew you.

All the flowers of all the tomorrows
are in the seeds of today.
- Indian Proverb

KEN HAHLWEG:
GARDENER, WOLSELEY
What I love most about gardening is the absolute feeling of bliss that a person gets when you are engaged fully. It’s very difficult to extricate myself from the garden and go to work.

The two willows in the back frame the yard. The trees are amazing, they frame the house, they protect and they provide shade and shelter.

A garden takes care and it’s a relationship between a person and the land. Health is not defined just as physical health its physical its emotional its spiritual as well and the garden gives to all of that and so I would think gardeners are quite healthy individuals. Love and patience are probably the 2 essential ingredients.

He who plants a garden plants happiness.
- Author Unknown

LINDA STILKOWSKI:
GARDENER, ST JAMES
For the last four years I have been writing the gardening column for the Free Press. Having a nice yard and a nice garden really has enhanced my lifestyle. I spent a lot of time out there. It’s good exercise, it’s very restful for me.

There’s so many fragrances…there’s things you just want to reach out and touch. I enjoy my surroundings. I don’t have any desire for a cottage and I really don’t have a desire to travel any more. I love to get out there as soon as the sun comes up…and it’s all a sense of peaceful calm.

Gardening is an exercise in optimism.
Sometimes, it is a triumph of hope over experience.
- Marina Schinz

I think that gardening opens up our own personal barriers because it gives us something in common with a stranger. It’s actually brought me together with a lot of my neighbours, they have a reason to stop and talk to me.

I think the whole community gardening thing took off particularly on Ethelbert is because that is a little neighbourhood to itself. Really what they’ve done is made themselves be felt as very special. And rightly so, it’s a special area of Winnipeg.

There is more pleasure in
making a garden
Than in contemplating a paradise.
- Anne Scott-James

CARRIE YUDAI:
GARDENER, WOLSELEY
At the front there was nothing, just grass and I decided to plant on the boulevard that’s how it came to be. Everybody started digging the boulevard and planting perennials. Now as you can see the boulevard is looking really nice. Ethelbert is the best street in the city. Also gardening has brought us together, the whole neighbourhood.

The clavia, I have a clavia, and oh I love that plant. The blooms are orange, bright orange. They are just spectacular. You plant whatever you like and if it survives it survives. Winnipeg gardeners should be patient and not afraid to keep on trying… even plants that are too tender for here.

When I go to work in the morning I will look at them. My husband thinks I am crazy because I talk to them too. See you later. I don’t say see you later to my husband but to my plants. It makes me feel really good and relaxed.

To cultivate a garden is to
walk with God.
- Christain Nestell Bovee

ALAN DOERKSEN:
GARDENER, FORT GARRY
My garden is woodland garden; it tries to mimic what you would find in a boreal forest -various elevations a sunken area rather than one flat plain. And over time I have evolved, created this little paradise retreat for myself my family my friends.

Gardening is critical to my well being. In fact during my time in the church as a minister, it was a place of rejuvenation of my soul. It is a place of tranquillity and peace. Walking in the garden gives me excitement, joy, enthusiasm for life, connects me, grounds me. To walk in the garden is just a spiritual experience.

I think gardening is relational it’s connecting us to the earth. A garden is a place where the human soul and the earth connect. I discovered my artist’s soul in the garden. It’s a place where human creativity finds expression in the earth – that’s a garden.

The plant right now that is in bloom is called meadow sweet… it has this beautiful pink puffy kind of bloom and it’s just so delicate and yet so vibrant in colour. I tell people plants are like people. The most important growth is the growth you don’t see, the roots.

A garden is a love song, a duet
Between a human being and Mother Nature.
- Jeff Cox

CHRISTINE TRETIAK KYDON:
GARDENER, RIVER HEIGHTS
I remember my mother’s garden in New Jersey; she grew a lily called black beauty. I was always fascinated that out of this sprout that looked like asparagus, this spectacular flower evolved.

I’m a gardener because I have always liked colour, form, shape and I thought this was one way of expressing those feelings and images. My passion for all the flowers I have grown has narrowed down to lilies. They are spectacular, exotic, some of them very fragrant. I enjoy showing people the garden. It’s satisfying to have people stop to admire it.

The Earth Laughs in Flowers
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

LORA SCHROEDER:
GARDENER WOLSELEY
This is the home my great grand mother lived in and also my aunt and uncle – so I have memories of coming here. One of the things I love about gardening is digging in the dirt. I love weeding and in fact my friends accuse me of weeding their gardens, and I do.

It was just this little corner the first year and then every year the garden grew. It’s grown really organically and as we had more time the garden eventually has become one garden. If you come along the sidewalk it’s very difficult to discern whose garden it is, it’s a shared garden.

It’s a really front street kind of neighbourhood. Lots of people are out walking, they are out on bikes with their kids. We’ve become a landmark for the children of the area. They know, you ride up to the garden and sit and wait for their parents to catch up.

I have gotten to know so many people in this community because of the garden. I think the thing that my daughters Emma and Kate enjoy most about the garden is the flowers and being able to go in there and pick bouquets. The garden has grown to encompass the sidewalk or even the street. We’ve taken out all the grass in the boulevard and put in a prairie wild flower mix, which is filled with bachelor buttons, poppies and calendula and daisies.

TALL GRASS PRAIRIE
NAR: Long ago before human gardeners, nature was the prairie’s gardener. And what nature sowed was the tall grass prairie. At one time 1-1/2 billion acres of grasses and wildflowers. One small 32-acre patch survives in the west part of Winnipeg. The Living Prairie Museum.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
-William Blake

NAR: One of the earliest expressions of the gardens established by the earliest settlers is at Captain Kennedy house on River Road.

SHANNON SENAVITCH:
INTERPRETER, CAPTAIN KENNEDY HOUSE
Captain Kennedy was an explorer – he worked for the Hudson Bay company he was a justice of the Peace as well as a Townsman in St Andrews.

These beautiful gardens were built in the 1920s and are indicative of a non-farming family in St Andrews at that time. It’s just really calm and relaxing place to come and enjoy the scenery.

People come from all over the world to visit these gardens. When I walk through these gardens I just feel at peace they are gorgeous, they make me smile every morning when the sun is coming off the river it’s just beautiful.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty;
That is all ye know on Earth,
And all ye need to know.
-John Keats

NAR: Increasingly recognition is being given to private gardens. And to beautifully landscaped commercial properties by a group called Take Pride Winnipeg.

COLLEEN KURLOWICH:
TAKE PRIDE WINNIPEG
Take Pride Winnipeg is an organization dedicated to keep Winnipeg clean and beautiful.

One of our most popular programs is our Winnipeg in Bloom Contest.

We had 485 people participate: businesses, residential, community efforts like churches and parks as well. Some of our contestants are so enthusiastic they call us in January for their entry forms and we don’t have them printed yet. When people find out they have won they are very excited. They take a lot of pride in their gardening; so to be recognized is a real source of pride for them.

A beautiful city helps to instil a sense of civic pride and also is great for tourism. We have a lot of people who ask for a list of entries so they can visit on tours. We have a lot of commercial projects that enter each year and they are beautiful. Waterfront Drive in Winnipeg is just beautiful, they have done an excellent job landscaping very new street, really breathtaking. When people are working downtown it’s a great way to step away from your office and stop and smell the roses.

There is also a national contest that Winnipeg is a part of called Communities in Bloom and Winnipeg captured that contest in 2001.

JACK LUBINSKI:
CITY OF WINNIPEG PARK SERVICES
It’s very important for a city to have beautiful parks it affects the quality of life. A great example of this is at Vimy Ridge Park and secondly at Kildonan Park. And our boulevards are just teeming with colours and beautiful displays of annuals throughout the city. We have over 1400 plants and beds throughout Winnipeg.

There is a national communities in bloom program and Winnipeg has won twice since 1995. It made everyone involved in the CIB so proud.

It has been harder to maintain public open landscapes in recent years.

JAN PEDERSON:
GARDEN CENTER OWNER
The level of interest that should exist in public planting doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed for a very long time. That passion has been replaced by a careful look at the bottom line.

There is I believe a lot of pressure on municipalities not to overspend and unfortunately the public gardens public parks and public places have really taken that hit. It’s unfortunate but that’s the way it is.

COLLEEN KURLOWICH:
TAKE PRIDE WINNIPEG
There are many gardens throughout the city where community groups have become involved in taking care of public parks and in those areas you see generally a lot more flowers and generally more personal care.

Your mind is a garden,
Your thoughts are the seeds,
The harvest can be
Either flowers or weeds.
- Author Unknown

MARY POPIEN:
GARDENER, RIVER HEIGHTS
Here at Montrose school we see a long drift of blooming plants there are many Lilies, bergamot, daylilies, rudbekia a huge amount of rose campion in the full sun, along a busy street.

We are lucky to live across the street from a park where we also can plant. Where we have full sun, where we have acreage. The small park contains 6 ornamental gardens. We have almost all perennials now and they are doing beautifully after almost 6 years. Somebody actually asked me if I had gotten involved in the park and had organized those gardens so that I would have a better view from my home. And I think that is the reason I did it because I am a selfish person. I have donated thousands of hours of my time doing this.

My husband is a great support for anything I do but in the garden he is my secret weapon. He gives me tools that I absolutely appreciate more than jewellery.

In this neighbourhood the children call me the garden lady… I find it a compliment. I love to garden because it’s part of who I am, who I’ve been all my life. Gardening is really important to me as a human being it’s helped me through times when I have been very ill and when I have had a lot of pain and I would really recommend it as a healing place for anyone.

I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
- Emma Goldman

NORA REID:
GARDENER NORTH KILDONAN
Our garden is almost a woodland type of garden. We have a low area that was cleared out because we wanted to save the trees. We were able to do sunlight plants as well as shade plants.

The native pants usually survive and do very well. We have 30 or more native plants that have started on their own… or that we have brought in. It’s just wonderful; to see how much progress a plant can make even in a day.

The garden is a ground plot for the mind.
- Thomas Hill

HELEN PTASZNIK:
VOLUNTEER TOUR GUIDE ENGLISH GARDENS
This is a very peaceful garden when you come through here. The paths are soft, it’s cool, it’s shady. You get a sense you are in an entirely different place. This is a place you can come in the morning and nurture your soul and just sit and watch.

Coming to this garden is an inspiration. Lots of tourists come here people from different parts of Canada, different parts of the world, because they are under the impression that we are a cold, cold climate and that nothing really grows here. Here at the English Garden at this time of year it’s a riot of colour.

MAURICE LARSON:
ENGLISH GARDENS SUPERVISOR
The gardens are a perfect spot to come and experience of what we have learned over time: yellows and blues. One of the favourite areas of the garden is the red garden and our use of red and black this year. We have a black peony poppy which is absolutely stunning and the colour is so intense. People are amazed by that.

HELEN PTASZNIK:
VOLUNTEER TOUR GUIDE ENGLISH GARDENS
There’s no better place in Winnipeg to see a garden, there is nothing on this scale. If you want to see this garden at a specific time come in the evening. The sun is low, it’s quiet and that is when the smells really come out.

I see young couple sitting on the benches looking at each other rather than the flowers but you can really tell they are enjoying the atmosphere the ambience the quiet. They are just drinking in the garden.

MAURICE LARSON:
ENGLISH GARDENS SUPERVISOR, CITY OF WINNIPEG
Come and smell the fragrances and see the change, the flowers, the shading during the day. There is so much beauty that you can observe.

Another thing people are fond of is remembrances of the garden. So peonies may remind them of their grandmother and days they visited the garden together. So we are striving to help them recreate those memories and gardens are memory. Everyday you see people leaving the garden with a smile on their face and then we feel we have done our job.

A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.
- Sadi

IRIS KENNEDY:
GARDENER, CHARLESWOOD
Most of the gardeners I know are 99% women; the men like to take people around their wife’s garden but they are not really involved in the garden.

I think for women it gets them into their own little world. When you’re gardening you’re totally in your own little world, nobody matters, no problems matter, doing something you love to do.

Gardening is so popular in our neighbourhood. One of the beautiful gardens is my friend Lynn and Marina on the side and it’s created a wonderful friendship between the three of us. And we trade plants and ideas and we really bounce off of each other for really creative things in our garden too.

In friendship’s fragrant garden,
There are flowers of every hue.
Each with its own fair beauty
And its gift of joy for you.
-Friendship’s Garden

JAN PEDERSON:
GARDEN CENTER OWNER
Gardeners are a group of people who, once infected by the bug, never lose it. It’s hobby like no other. Today’s gardener says my garden is part of my life. Gardeners spend in the neighbourhood of $250 to $750. The most popular plant by far is the endless summer hydrangea.

My father taught me how to love plants from a very early age and that’s a special gift that I hope I can pass on to my kids.

You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.
- Anonymous

The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.
- Author Unknown

VALERIE DENESIUK:
GARDENER, ELMWOOD
My first memory of gardens was very early… coming down the hill…there was this row of hollyhocks against the white stucco house and it was just a blaze of colour. It’s still in my memory totally there and I just love hollyhocks to this day because of it.

I have become my Baba, my grandmother was a great gardener totally addicted to gardening. Because I have a small yard I have to be careful of what’s there but most of my plants are perennials or self-seeding.

Special time is first thing in the morning to go out in the garden to see things you take that first cup of coffee and wander around in your housecoat and look at what’s come new overnight.

True friendship is like a rose:
We don’t realize its beauty until it fades.
-Evelyn Loeb

I have heard the expression that your garden is always the reflection of your friends because there is bits and pieces of them. Lee I find her yard interesting. Her’s is 10 times bigger than mine she has these little rooms and pockets. Nettie Melnyk has a marvellous garden and yard with an explosion of colour you wouldn’t believe. Fran is my hero because she gardens in such a carefree manner you just go in there and enjoy it and she doesn’t worry about the rules she gardens.

Where flowers bloom so does hope.
- Lady Bird Johnson

ROB EVERITT:
GARDENER, RAGLAN ROAD: I’m a gardener because I need the relaxation, my job is very busy I just relax in the garden and have a lot of fun.

BILL GRINDELL:
GARDENER, RAGLAN ROAD: I’m a gardener because of the sense of peace of fulfilment that these kind of activities give me.

ROB EVERITT: Bill and I garden together and that has been very fulfilling.

BILL GRINDELL: I think my love of gardening came from my aunt. She loved to garden and instilled that love of the earth in me. I think that so many women are gardeners because gardening is very much an experience in caring and watching things grow and being very patient.

ROB EVERITT: My favourite area of our garden is the front stairs.

ROB EVERITT: It’s become our favourite spots of the garden we’ve introduced rocks with lichen into it.

BILL GRINDELL: My favourite area is the side garden with the gravel path the sense of tightness and closeness in there and the play of the light and shadow especially late in the day is a feeling of tranquillity. And a bit of an Asian aesthetic as well. Around 6-7 is wonderful because you get the long extended shadows.

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint,
And the soil and sky as canvas.
- Elizabeth Murray

HELEN STEEL:
GARDENER, ST JAMES
My garden is like an extended room of our family room and I like gazing around enjoying the fruits of my labour. This year I am happiest with the hanging baskets. And the summer glow is a new plant I got this year and it’s been very prolific and done very well.

What I like about annuals you can pick up so many different flower varieties the colour is fantastic you can change the colour, this year I have gone mostly to pinks and to whites. It makes you realize there is more to life than roaring down the highway and roaring down the road of life.

Flowers are the sweetest things God
ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
- Henry Ward Beecher

DARLENE GOLINOSKI:
GARDENER, ST VITAL
I started in gardening because I was looking for a way to be creative and a way of being physical. Gardening gives a person, any person an opportunity to be an artist.

When I go out into the garden in the morning and the birds are chirping the world just seems like beautiful place. And there is a lot of serenity and hopefulness. It’s a wonderful way to start the day. My favourite plant is the rose called prairie joy.

One of the main things I have learned is patience and to love the unexpected because you never know how things are actually going to grow. Gardening is a lot of luck there is some skill but a lot of luck and you have to be an optimist

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made
While learning to see things from the plant’s point of view.
- H. Fred Ale

CAROL CARLSON:
GARDENER, ST VITAL
I’ve been involved in garden tours for 6 years. It was mainly to see in other people’s yards to get ideas. There’s no end to the fun in the garden tour… and everyone enjoys it. You will see gardens of all types on the garden tour from absolutely perfectly laid out expensive gardens to one garden it was the tiniest front yard you could come across.

Gardens are a great insight into people’s personalities cause I think people keep their houses the same way they keep their houses. I’m talking about women now. I think the women I know who garden – the gardens are the same as their house – they are either neat and tidy or they are shabby overgrown and messy – and that’s how they keep their house, exactly how they keep their garden.

I remember when my mother planted petunias and geraniums and those were the only two plants she ever planted and I said I would never plant them, but I do. I think that every good woman gardener needs a good man who says yes dear, who will do the hard work, the shovelling, the building. It’s nice to have a yes dear in your life.

With a few flowers in my garden,
half a dozen pictures
And some books, I live without envy.
- Lope de Vega

ALICE KULUK:
GARDENER, HENDERSON HIGHWAY
My garden is probably a really casual fun garden with lots of art in it. As an artist I feel like my garden is an extension of my living space and I do like to put my art and my friend’s art to enjoy it there.

We are talking a real variety of art. Some of it is really fun and some of it was from found objects that we’ve just turned into art that was really nothing till we put it into the garden. I think gardening is really important to me. I go out there and just lose track of time and myself in the garden.

Being located on the river has really been an asset because we don’t have a cottage and so this home to us is like a cottage. I just feel very relaxed and comfortable when I walk around the garden. It’s also really rewarding when friends come by and give you compliments about how great the garden looks.

I guess the advice I would give to upcoming gardeners is to think of leaf shapes, leaf colour, texture, then the flower after. Because when you look at your garden it should be pretty and colourful when it isn’t in bloom and that comes from the use of perennials.

A garden really lives only insofar
as it is an expression of faith,
The embodiment of a hope and
a song of praise.
-Russell Page

DORIS MAE OULTON:
GARDENER, ARMSTRONG POINT
This garden has a calmness and stillness to it. It has several water features. It’s very quiet and in the morning you come out and feel the peacefulness. It’s a very god feeling garden. We added a contemplative garden this year, which I love.

You create something and you can nurture it and watch it grow and it just matures so quickly. There is such a great sense of accomplishment. A garden has to show a person’s touch. It has to show an arranging; it has to show someone has put something into it. I don’t count gardens that looked like they’ve been put in by machine but if someone has spoken to that piece then it becomes a garden.

You have to come to peace with your garden in Winnipeg. You just have to learn what works in this climate and stick to that and then it will tumble out and reward you

My favourite plant right now is the hosta, they are like little lace petticoats. They frame things so beautifully and they are always so symmetrical and they are always green and voluptuous. I love the hosta.

In order to comprehend the beauty
of a Japanese garden,
It is necessary to understand
- or at least to learn to understand
- The beauty of stone.
- Lafcadio Hearn