Canadian Gardening Day is a new national initiative to celebrate the importance of private and public gardens as well as the role they play in promoting good stewardship.
The St. Albert Botanic Park has joined the initiative in an effort to bring awareness about the part it plays in the community.
“Friday, June 19 we are encouraging people to come to the park to see what is here but really, it will be an initiative to encourage park volunteers,” said past president Margaret Plain.
From 2 to 6 p.m. park volunteers will be on hand in the various gardens to explain how the plants are grown. Visit the rose garden to see roses, the cottage garden to see what’s in bloom now or the xeriscaping and various lilac and fruit-tree gardens.
“We will have garden-related activities for children as well. They will plant a bean in a pot,” Plain said.
This year the St. Albert Botanic Park celebrates its 25th anniversary and it has a dedicated crew of approximately 150 volunteers, who work in many areas, including with park organization and management as well as in building the infrastructure such as fences and walls. Many of the volunteers maintain the various flower beds and mow the lawn, but there are never enough. All of the work in this five-acre park is done by volunteers, Plain said.
“There’s always turnover and this year we are developing more flower beds. More beds mean we need more volunteers,” she said.
Big work-bee days are organized at various times during the summer, but for the most part volunteers come out once a week at designated times to weed or to plant.
“If you have never gardened and want to learn, part of our mandate is to be here for educational purposes. If you want to work in the rose garden, we’ll teach you how. You can take the skills you learn here home with you. If you are an experienced gardener, we will just give you an area for you to look after on your own,” Plain said.
“The greatest amount of work this year will be done in the west-portion of the park, past the peony beds. We need help weeding and tidying along the fences,” Plain said. “We also have a volunteer landscape design committee and they set out the areas to be worked on each year.”
The park’s program is geared towards encouraging volunteers and the more hours you put in, the more perks there are.
“If you put in 50 hours of volunteer time this year, next year you can have a row in the garden to grow vegetables. There are also discounts on roses during the annual rose sale,” Plain said.
The St. Albert Botanic Park is located at 265 Sturgeon Rd. For more information visit www.stalbertbotanicpark.com But the peonies are blooming now and so are the irises. Come down and smell the peonies at the park on Friday, June 19 between 2 and 6 p.m. and celebrate Canadian Gardening Day.
