The remaking of the Front Gardens
When I first joined the garden club I did not know I would be working on the front gardens. They had huge juniper and a variety of overgrown bushes as well as a lot of quack grass. They were not a garden that wants to draw you in. We had the beautiful art work on the front of the building completed by community residents but the colors and beauty was not being highlighted.
At one of the garden meetings it was suggested that we do something with the front gardens. We were reminded by Martin Bundell that it was decide many moons ago to dedicate the gardens to Ron and Margaret Gilbertson. It was agreed to put in a bench and a plaque. The challenge was on to combine a vision from a previous Board to what we saw as a garden group. The consensus was a community garden, were others could come and enjoy it, something that would care on and be easy to care for.
In 2017 we started to remove the overgrown bushes. We trimmed up the bushes on the north side of the front door and left them there and focused on the south side of the garden. After moving all but two bushes we removed 6” of dirt brought in new dirt, leveled, sculpted, and planted some rocks.
In 2018 we added the pathway, planted the majority of plants, put lots of mulch around and added the bench.
In 2019 we added more plants, more mulch and got some bigger rocks and one large one for the plaque.
In 2020 we finally added the plaque to the rock.
It was a long project. It took many hours of planning, weeding, plants, shopping and more weeding and planting but after a year or so a garden was born. I want to thank the many people who helped and supported this project.
The garden club was very supportive. I would come with some ideas, mostly in my head and they supported the direction I took. Josefine Singh was my most helpful weeder when we had no plants and just dirt. We weeded in the rain.
Melanie and Jim have been repeatedly supportive over the years with moving mulch, planting, and weeding. I could not have done this project without them. Kevin and Steven have been my best plant shoppers. We headed to the nursey and came home with two car loads full of plants. There has been numerous people who have watered the gardens, Marina, Josefine, and Mike.
The bench and the plaque we were able to get through the City program and Councillor Caterina.
Just recent the attaching the plaque to the rock, a process in itself was also done by the City of Edmonton.