the flower lady

Thanks for the encouraging words... I have some things to sort out about the gardens. I'm so intertwined with them even if I try not to be. And on a gardening level, sometimes I feel that they're a reflection of my level of (or lack of) gardening expertise. This is embarassing to admit because it's not about me. But when the garden looks good, I feel some pride and when it looks trashed, I feel like its a reflection on me. These feelings don't sit right with me...I've got some stuff to sort out!

I have been planting a ton of seeds and bulbs and I have a lot of hope for the potential of the gardens. It won't be long before they fill up. I'm anticipating that next year is going to be a good year. I've been sneaking seedlings and seeds along the fence accross the street too. That's a great feeling. One day I'd like to see the whole street lined with colour. The city cuts the grass accross the street a few times/year to I've been reaching under the fence and planting there with hopes of survival for the plants!

An older gentleman walked by me the other day and said "so you're the flower lady!" I thought it was cute. Our friend Tony is renting some space in the building next door and he's started a roof garden in some pvc piping! It's mostly ornamental grasses. It looks great from what I can see!

This blog is looking a bit drab for lack of photos! Must get on that! It's a busy season right now. Collecting and planting seeds, transplanting... there's still lots left to do! I've been enjoying the sunshine!

zinnias

Originally I meant this post to be a photo of the bright and colorful zinnia blooms but I didn't have my camera that day and the next day absolutely everything that was blooming was picked. It seemed to happen over lunch break, we think we may know who did it. At least the plants are still there and the zinnias still have blooms on them so we may get that photo yet. It's hard not to let events like this be a big set-back. It certainly is discouraging after hours of organizing and work to have it trashed in a matter of minutes. I still have loads of seeds and bulbs to plant, so I'll keep plugging away..... back to the zinnias. I planted those from seeds and they made such big bright plants. It's fascinating what can come from a single small seed!

the book

I haven't read it yet, but here it is! Guerrilla gardening : how to create gorgeous gardens for free / Barbara Pallenberg ; illustrations by Cathy Pavia ; photographs by Lou Gaines.

I just found it in the library catalogue today, but it's checked out at the moment. I let you know how it is! Looks cute and right up my alley...

Sept is a busy season!! I've got over 16 types of bulbs and seeds to get planted and over ten kinds of plants to transplant now that it's cooled off. I'm also ready to invade my friends' yards and take any plants they don't want!

Getting ready for one such event yesterday, I was trucking some extra soil back and forth from the shop to the CN triangle. There was a woman(about 10 yrs older than me?) working the streets where I was buzzing about and she asked "why the garden? Just because?" She told me she liked gadening too. I said ya I want to plant gardens everywhere, I'm addicted to gardening. "That's ONE addiction that's ok!" she said to me.

It was a warmer day yesterday and the whole neighbourhood was buzzing with activity--women working, johns, users, people everywhere... on top of the people working in all of the local businesses. I actually saw one woman with a pimp (I'm quite sure), you don't see that often in that neighbourhood. It was such a strange feeling to watch it all in action. She seemed so thin and timid, but not overly timid, he was lurking in the shadows and then would periodically come and talk to her. He was so disrespectful to her. It's so hard to imagine the circumstances that can cause a woman to end up in that situation. It takes exploitation to a whole new level, just factoring even one more person into the equation. At times like that, it's really hard to get "I Live Off You" by the X-Ray Spex out of my head.

One woman who is very often around whenever I go gardening (the one who initially helped me haul soil) is always ready to chat and joke with me. It's nice to see a friendly face. So many faces in the area are vacant. Anyways, every now and then I happen to be there when she gets picked up. I hate seeing that. I wonder what it's like for her. She seems quite cheerful about it. I know it's her bread and butter (literally), if she hasn't had a client for a few days she complains to me about being hungry. Maybe I should just feed her. I can't tell if she's trying to manipulate me and I want our friendship to stay friends--equals--if I start taking care of her I don't want to change our friendship to someone she can use... But maybe I shouldn't think so much and just feed her. I mean, really wouldn't it be better if she had food and therefore even prostituted herself just one less time? That may be over-simplified. I don't think there are any rules about relationships. Everyone and every situation is different. It takes wisdom and readiness to be moved by the Spirit! Just some thoughts.

By the way... if anyone has a wheelbarrow they'd like to donate or a garden hose, I would be greatly appreciative. Also, if any of you have seeds to collect from plants in your yard or need some plants to be thinned out, I'm your lady!! Any plant donations can be put to good use! I'll try get some garden photos up here soon. The Zinnias are looking really colorful and beautiful.

interesting quotes

"Healthy people are inextricably linked to healthy environments..."

-John R. Parkins, "A Better Way of Living", Mosaic, summer 2006


"...Ecological citizenship invites a closer connection, which leads to change in policy, economy, and lifestyle."

-Brian McLaren, A General Orthodoxy

a confession

Here's one of the green spaces in my parent's neighbourhood. Hopefully our gardens will eventually grow into looking this good! My friend Laurie says good things don't usually happen fast and she's probably right. I feel kind of bummed that the CN triangle looks so shabby at the moment, but everyone keeps telling me that it's a great start. So we'll go with that!
The other evening I was watering the sun garden when a 50-or-so gentleman walked by. He complimented the garden and then said 'I bet plants get stolen don't they' or something like that. I said ya, it was a bummer and that I probably had about 50 plants stolen this spring. He took a few steps away then turned around and said 'I have to admit I took one plant, I think it was.... a tulip... ya, a tulip.' Then we chatted for a bit, told me about a floral arrangement course that his ex took, asked what kind of plant the hens & chicks were and recommended an electric fence if I wanted to keep people from wrecking the garden. According to him, anything nice in this neighbourhood either gets stolen or destroyed. 'Oh well you've got to try!' I told him! How hilarious that he felt he needed to come and confess to me! Well hopefully he'll feel for the garden a bit more now and spread the word to respect it.

Tigrida

One of my newest favorite flowers! Tigrida... or Mexican Shell Flower. I happened to pick one up at a garden sale in Robert's Creek last year and loved it. (Incidentally, another flower colour change--it was yellow last year and came up white this year. What's in that soil, anyways?!) Last week, I picked some Tigrida seeds at the UBC botanical garden, yay! Mexican Shell Flowers, here I come!!

the sun garden grows...

Julie and I put out a bunch of sun-loving plants that I've been saving for the sun garden. Not to mention, we added a bunch of annuals that I picked up from Emerging Hope (see below). Still more scarce than I'd like it to be. But it's just a start. Gardening takes patience.........
here are some pictures of the sun garden at sun down:

CN triangle

here is the CN triangle. It actually doesn't look too bad in the first picture, but it's usually overrun with garbage and weeds. We hauled the soil down there (second photo) and now tonight Julie and I threw a few annuals in there to get some colour going before the 'real' garden gets in there. I don't feel too satisfied with it at the moment, but I guess it's still an improvement. I got 30 plants for $30 on Sat!!! from Emerging Hope (www.emerginghope.ca) a group that does gardening projects to employ people from the downtown eastside.

aah

I'm so relieved... we finally finished moving the pile of dirt tonight. There was a fair bit left (you can see it in the right of the dirt picture below). We shared a bit of it but then a few of my friends came out tonight and helped me wheel the rest of it to the CN triangle. The fever's catching! A few people have asked if they could do some gardening on the plots and a few people have asked if they could bring some plants down and plant them. Probably about 4 offers by now! It's a great feeling, that I'm not in this on my own. I remember the feeling I had after I started the first sun garden and shade garden: I just thought 'what have I done??' I felt like I'd bitten off way more than I could chew. This time though it seems totally manageable. Maybe because I have some experience under my belt and some suitable plants ready to go in when the weather's right. Maybe because the gardening's beginning to feel like a community effort. It was so fun to see who came out of the woodwork to help with the garden. Hopefully I've made some new garden buddies for some future garden sessions! I wouldn't mind approaching a few businesses for donations of plants and/or bulbs... not sure if I feel brave enough for that yet. We'll see. Now the question remains: why do I feel so passionate about beautifying the city when I can't even keep my own kitchen clean??

the dirt

We got the dirt! We decided not to go ALL the way to Hastings, seemed better to start this big and expand from there afterwards. The only setback is that it's way too hot to put out plants right now, especially when I don't make it down there to water much. We also brought about 8 wheelbarrows worth of soil to the CN triangle to get the garden started there. Thanks to all the neighbours for help hauling soil!! (upstairs and next door!) Here's a picture of the lot accross the street to where we're hoping/dreaming/praying/crossing our fingers that the city/CN might grant us access:

comes with a billboard!

women and their stories

As I garden, many women have stories to tell me relating to flowers. One day I met Elise who told me why she likes flowers. She is from a reserve north of Vancouver and she told me of her grandfather's recent funeral. It was a traditional native ceremony that involved spreading flowers over his grave. Her two year old son picked up on that and one of the last times she visited him she said he kept picking flowers for her and bringing them to her. She had been sober for a few years she told me, but now she's back on the streets. She was pretty high at the time. I had told her about the plants getting stolen. Suddenly she broke out into a prayer: "Dear God, please don't let anybody steal these flowers until they have bloomed. Thank you."

Last week Michelle and I were clearing out a space to start a garden at the corner of Cordova and Raymur Ave (the CN triangle). There were a few women working but one in particular started up a conversation with us. She told us she commutes in from Langley to pay her bills. She was one of the few women working down there that aren't addicted. She had a lot of interesting stories and information for us about what goes on around there. She was shocked to hear that people have been stealing plants. She offered to paint us a sign if we brought her wood and paint. She said she's dislexic so I'd have to write it out for her but she's been to art school and thought she should use her training for something.

dirt's coming!

Lillies are blooming all over the yard, we have lots of varieties... it's so pretty! We're ordering a truck-load of soil for Glen and Hastings and we're having a work party on July 26th.... it'll cover almost the whole 1/2 block on our side of the street, from the alley to Hastings.... and hopefully there'll be some left over for the CN triangle of property a block away where we'd like to start a garden. (different from the whole lot previously mentioned.)

guerrilla gardeners extraordinaires

I know some people who commandeered an empty, garbage-filled lot in the downtown-eastside. They actually cut the locks on the fence and just started to garden it. It looks amazing! Here are a few photos of the first lot. Eventually the owners drove by the lot and wondered what the heck was going on on the lot. Now they've done up paperwork, officially giving them permission to be there, the workers just needed to sign a waiver. Amazing!!













































Since then, a sausage factory accross the back alley offered up one of their empty lots (opens right on to Hastings, by the Patricia) as they didn't have immediate plans for it and they liked what they saw at the other lot!













Now..... they've got their eye on the HUGE lot accross the street from the Glen and Hastings garden... it's CN property, but we'll ask anyways.

double standards...

I could've sworn this lilly was white when I planted it! It was a potted plant that I got for mother's day last year and after it had bloomed I popped in the ground to see if it would come back. It did! And it's red! And it's twice the height it was last year!





The other day 2 guys from the shop were outside on their coffee break. Commenting on how it was too bad that the plants had been stolen, one of them scuffed the corner of the dirt with his shoe and out came a needle and a crack pipe that had been burried in the soil.

I have had to fight the temptation to get casual about gardening at the shop. Sometimes I stop but the shop and see a weed. I pluck it, and then I see another one, and then suddenly get sucked into this netherworld of gardening and get dangerously cavelier... but no more. This latest discovery in the soil has served as a very effective warning. I have a husband and kids. I don't need to come home with HIV/AIDS.

A funny thing happened since then, a sad thing, really. I've gotten so used to treating the soil at the shop as diseased or dangerous that when I was weeding at home, I noticed that I was gardening so carefully, paranoid that I might get pricked with a needle.
I'll have to develop two minds about gardening to deal with these different worlds--one to stay careful and appropriately respectful/fearful at the shop, but still able to love the carefree feeling of plunging my hands into the soil at home.

(Inevetably when I'm in the yard with my toddlers I can't resist gardenign something and them suddenlyu someone needs lifting etc and they get covered in mud--at very least under the armpits!!)

details details

Here's the foget-me-nots that have already spread quite a ways. I think I'll move them to the back corner where they'll have more room to spread.

A bleeding heart had volunteered itself where the neighbours were planting a shed so I snatched that and then I also planted a few virginia creeper cuttings from the yard that have nicely rooted!



Next week is the Strathcona Community Garden plant sale, I can hardly wait!!

security systems.......

We've put up a few signs, 'please don't steal our plants' kind of idea, we'll see if it helps!

You wouldn't believe what I did the other day.... I had a clump of bamboo to plant in the shade garden. We dug a hole, inserted a plastic ring (a sawn-off barrel) --(which should help retain the bamboo's invasiveness)--and ran wire around the plant, ran it around the ring a few times and then around a hunk of concrete!! Then we burried it all and we put the bamboo in fairly deep as well, so we'll see how that works as a deterrent! ...Unbelievable that we went to such lengths, but then it can be pretty unbelievable what goes on in that alley as well...





but now the bamboo's
starting to grow! (don't mind the mess to the right there... trying to stop the wood wall from rotting.)

stolen plants

The first time someone stole a slew of plants, everyone was afraid to tell me. They tip-toed around me and waited for the right time to deliver the news. After the rock wall for the shade garden had been filled with soil, I threw some cheap plants in to brighten things up. I put in 9 tulips and 10 $0.54 primroses. I wasn't attached to the plants at all. I didn't know what colour the tulips would be and I've always found primroses to be a bit gaudy.





the spring flowers to fill in the soil at first, (they all got stolen a week or so later)







Anyways, when my husband told me the news, he acted as if he had to tell me that my pet hamster had died. It was fine, I reassured him, I had been expecting it all along. I was surprised it had taken until now for someone to steal flowers. I was relieved it was just the gaudy/unkown flowers though.

I took the news so well... but then the landslide happened. Day after day, plant after plant went missing. Then blooming flowers got cut off en masse. Suddenly, the garden that I had thought was terribly over-planted was thin and shabby-looking. I was so discouraged (and not to mention busy with kids) that I mostly left things for a month or so. Now I've opted to grow cuttings from my own yard and divide plants from my friends. Cheap and easily replaceable!

Yes, in the last month 54 plants have been stolen. But, at the same time, I recovered irises, lillies and a peony from Julie's yard as she was clearing some space. (Some of them got stolen--the peony was about to bloom, that one hurt-- but I consoled myself that I'd rescued the plants from the garbage anyways.) Julie also divided some bamboo for me. Crocosmia from my parents' garden, daisies from the side of hwy #1, geraniums from the neighbours and various plant divisions from my own yard have made their way to the garden.

This, in general, maybe a better way to go. It's inexpensive and if they're stolen, more is readily available!

I had debated for weeks about whether to plant periwinkle in the shade plot. (I know, don't I have anything better to do? But I'm not constantly thinking about it, it's just on my mind as I look at other gardens as I walk around the neighbourhood.) While periwinkle tolerates shade, it can sperad rapidly and if left unattended, it can really take over and look a bit scruffy.

Finally, I decided that I didn't really want a ground cover, I was going for a mixed border look. But, the following week, someone had plunked a handful of periwinkle into the soil! I quickly watered it and it's taken hold beautifully! I threw all of my debating out the window--who can argue with random acts of kindness? Not only was it a thoughtful anonymous act, but it meant to me that someone else in the community was taking a little ownership of the garden too. How ironic that someone had planted periwinkle, I wondered if they had knowingly planted it in a shade spot or if it had been coincidence.

Fluid Gardening

Glen and Hastings

May 2006

I can see that these are going to be fluid landscapes. Not only do they change with the growing seasons, but in the last month or so, around 55 plants have been stolen (27 plants and 27 or so tulips cut off).

So now: how to respond to this? During the initial planting of sun garden #1 I (and many of my friends and family) fully expected that all of the plants might've disappeared the following day. I tried to contain my excitement as the only vandals the following day had brought were the crows after my bulbs. Each day that passed brought more hope for the longevity and potential of the project.

As the plants took root, my own attachment also took root into that soil. I knew better, but despite my ongoing efforts to remain divested and detached, the gardens and their contents (now the sun garden doubled and a shade garden in the alley) begain to seem like they would be permanent fixtures.

After about 6 month, there had been no vandalism and in fact, a few people had added elements of their own : a butterfly lawn ornament showed up one day and a duck head (broken umbrella handle) had been placed in the sun garden a few days before that.

At one point, a day lily went missing. I thought it odd that someone would steal it in March or so--to the untrained eye it would just look like a few long leaves. There were other colorful plants around it, but maybe the person knew what they were doing. The day lily might've been the most expensive plant out there. But, right before the daylily was stolen, I had come accross a bunch of lilies that had been in a rubbish heap in our alley. Another house was throwing out a bucket so excitedly scooped up the lillies and brought them home in the bucket!

Now that I've thought about it, I've realized that they'd perform differently, but I initially shrugged off the day lily loss, excited that I just happened to have some replacement lillies. (and I happened to find some day lillies on sale a few months later for $10 cheaper anyways!)

This seems to be the pattern of the gardens. As plants disappear, new ones present themselves. It's fluid gardening. (Sometimes with an alarmingly high turn-over rate!) For some time, I had been poring over library books on gardening, analyzing yards, drawing diagrams, all in the name of finding the perfect sustainable landscape designs for the gardens. I now realize that the design of these gardens will be much more liquid than any of my research can predict. It's as if the gardens are my hands cupping water, some water slips through my fingers but then friends and strangers top it up.

Glen & Hastings

Fall 2005

This garden was planted to bring colour and hope to a neglected and desperate part of Vancouver city. In an industrial neighborhood where many sex-trade workers spend hours-- day and night, the plot's location is on Glen, just off of Vancouver's notorious East Hastings.

Needles, used condoms, garbage and makeshift homes can be found within feet of the flowers you see here.

Although what you see in early pictures are mostly annuals, there are plenty of perennials and bulbs laying in wait.

Some people have laughed at my efforts as they've walked past, but smiles and appreciative comments have come from many others. Several women in the alley have complimented the garden and usually strike up a conversation with me about their history of gardening or a story of why they like flowers. One sex-worker even helped me haul bags of soil that were to be dumped on the garden one day!

The goal is to develop sustainable beauty that will enrich the lives in the neighborhood for years to come, even after we've left our rental spot in the neighborhood.

The first plot planted was sun garden #1, soon to be expanded if I have anything to do with it! (Lots of room for expansion!)





The sun garden looked something like this BEFORE












sun garden DURING
early spring 2006










sun garden AFTER
(although it looks much different now, more pix to come!)
late spring 2006










Next up is the shade garden in the corner....

the Shade Garden

Shade garden BEFORE











the shade garden AFTER

Amazing things grow in Vancouver!

Before I really get into the guerrilla gardening projects, I think I'll post some photos from our yard. Most things have been planted by other people but we get to enjoy them.

I've been really into container gardening at home. After moving from a hot dry climate, I was impressed by how many things can be grown in containers in Vancouver. I have about 45 pots on the go right now, from asparagus, spinach and rasberries to daylillies, clematis and a willow tree. It's a lot of fun!

Hopefully this blog won't be too confusing. I thought of making a few different ones, one for the yard, one for my project gardens and possibly one for plants I see when I'm out and about but that's just going to make my life too complicated on my end. SO hopefully you can follow, this will basically serve as a window into my world of gardening! KB




I bought these irises a few years ago at the Strathcona Community Garden sale for a few dollars. They were small when I bought them but they're at least 1.5m tall! I planted them in this marshy spot... this is the first year they've bloomed and there's 7-8 blooms at a time!












I like the headless angel with the rhododendrons. There's all kinds of interesting sculptures hiding out in the garden.