Daisies on the tracks

My friend was on a mission to have something planted on the tracks. Last year we tried seeds but to no avail. Mistakenly, I had formerly transplanted some wild daisies into the sun garden, transplants from the side of the highway. They WERE free afterall! But in one year they took over!! They were a solid mass-a ground cover-for at least a few square meters! Once we had dug them up, we decided to try and put them down by the tracks. At first I was reluctant because I don't want them invading the CN garden too. But Emily tells me that'll be her responsibility if the time comes. So with that reassurance, we've planted them along the tracks. They've survived hot trains singeing them, growing in nothing but gravel, transplanting, sun... you can't kill these things!!
Here's the back side of the CN triangle, you can see daises we've scattered along! Hopefully it'll turn out to be a nice blend of wildflowers. There is definitely no shortage of Yarrow there!!
If you keep looking down the tracks, you can see they cross Cordova. On the other side of Cordova is another lot that has been offered to us for gardening, just before that school bus down there. I'm hoping that this fall we might be able to do something....
P.S.-if you look closely in the first picture, you can see the rock wall of the periwinkle garden. (That dumpster gets parked there periodically for pick up but it's not a permanent fixture.) Also, in that photo, you can see that the tracks go under a bridge (Hastings). It's fairly crowded in the summer with people sleeping under it. Last night I saw a big Port City rat scurrying around there, I bet it's not the only one.

Watering in style!

Well we planted the linepainter's property a few weeks ago and it's looking great! Amazingly not a plant has been stolen! While we were planting, Ron brought us out some water..... now that's service!! Seriously though, water is definitely on the immediately to do list. We have just qualified for a water collection barrel from the City, which is wonderful! We will definitely need to come up with some more watering solutions ASAP though. Here's a photo of us getting started on the garden

More tulips!

I forgot to mention that I took another trip and got some more discarded bulbs, this time about 2-300 tulips! All orange I believe! There's going to be a whole lot of orange in the gardens next spring!

My kids helped me pick them up... we had about 10 min to do it so we just threw a couple of wheelbarrows-full into the van. I decided to let them die off at my house and spare the neighbourhood the sight. I filled up a wheelbarrow and the sandbox with soil and let the tulips live there till they faded. The ones that had already faded by the time I got them have been planted already, but now the other few hundred are ready to go down so the kids can play in the sand box!

(you can see the sandbox full of tulips on the left side of the picture)

I could've gone again to get a few more tulips, at least of a different colour, but I was out of energy and besides, my wheelbarrow and sandbox were already full! Hopefully next year we'll get some variety added to our spring bulbs. And hopefully there will be enough established plants to hide all those tulips when they're dying off!!

The Shade Garden

Suiting the theme of the gardens, the shade garden is also full of things that were planted and forgotten/given-up-on. Here these johnny jump-ups were from seed and now they're filling in all the gaps!

The shade garden is pretty overgrown at the moment and the trailing roses are hidden in the back, but it's full of pretty things (the bleeding heart is huge!) and at least it's not it's former garbage dump!

Here's a pretty columbine before it got cut off, the bergenia got cut off as well, but they were all pretty when they were blooming...!

Here you can see the periwinkle that someone added to the garden and there are some forget me nots tucked away in there as well.

It's catching

Well speaking from personal experience, creating new gardens is addicting.... it's almost like a disease and you can't stop seeing weedy boring land and thinking it'd make a great garden. And apparently it's catchy! The vision is spreading around the neighbourhood! The linepainters jumped on board with their great boulevard and our neighbours up the street have planted some lillies and have taken to watering their section. Now the business across the street from the CN triangle has built some planters! Can't wait to see who's next!!

(You can see the CN triangle in the background accross the street)

Sun Garden

Here are some recent pictures of the sun garden. It's getting to just the right age where most plants are too rooted to steal and the plants are big and have filled in nicely! It's a bit of a hodge-podge: depending what was on sale or donated at different times. Also, we've planted a few things that didn't come up and then lo and behold they appeared 2 years later. The beautiful foxglove above came from my Grandpa's wife. She shared her seeds with me a few years ago and now here it is! There's another pretty pink one, I'll have to get a picture of that too.This year the red hot poker has finally bloomed-I'm so excited! It's one of my favorite plants. Here it is with a rock rose!

Here's an idea...

I just saw a lot today that struck me as a great garden make-over lot. In an area where there's lots of prostituted women, maybe it could be developed into some kind of drop-in or social enterprise.... $500,000.... dreaming big!

Guerrilla gardening in the Guerrilla gardening...

Well someone's been guerrilla gardening in one of our latest guerrilla efforts! It's great! Last week a ceramic horse and hardy geranium showed up and this week there is chard and broccoli! I have been hoping to incorporate some more food into the gardens. I have 2 baby trees to espalier along the fence (is that a verb?) and planted a row of pole beans... just need to put thought into the food because there are lots of types of pollution in the neighbourhood. BUT... we ALL need more fruit and veggies, and our gardens might even count for the 2010 new food gardens in Vancouver by 2010 motion passed by city council...