Pretty Pictures of Pretty Things
Posted by I.A.M. in CANADA, Personal, THINKINESS, VancouverLate last week, Jennifer showed me around the place in Tsawwassen where she’s the Head Gardener, or ‘Executive Plant Manager’, or ‘Chief Natural Species Growing Babe’, or whatever her title is. It’s a beautiful place consisting of 1.8 acres of growing area that’s pretty much gone from zero to gorgeous in only two years.
As far as I understand it, The Delta Earthwise Demonstration Garden (which also sells fresh vegetables) was a dairy farm in its previous life, with some fruit and vegetables being also grown, and was recently generously leased to the area’s people through a non-funded non-profit society (essentially, they go scrounging for funds as much as they can). All of the flowers you see in the images have been planted in beds established last year from scratch (although there were some tended plants there before), and half of the ground used was un-touched entirely.
The yellow home you see in the images is the original farm house and is on the Heritage Building list. It was a museum of a sort for awhile, but is now used as a dorm for a local language school for visiting Japanese girls. This permits the house to have funding for on-going maintenance, and also makes the house be alive for the purpose it was built: to be a home.
There’s a fair number of pictures, but the ‘auto-play’ slide show moves quick-ish. Give it five minutes, probably, about the length of time the hourly radio news runs. Looking at flowers and nature for five minutes is probably a better thing to do than listening to the news anyway.
Here’s the images: Here are the images:
For those of you in the Metro Vancouver area interested in visiting, they’re located at the corner of Boundary Bay Road and 3rd Avenue in South Delta. It’s open seven days a week for self-guided tours, plus a number of events, tours, and workshops. You can even get an allotment plot if you’re lucky. Head to their site below for details about programmes, times, and so on.
To learn more about the Delta Earthwise Society, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca
To learn more about the garden itself, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca/garden.htm
To learn more about the farm itself, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca/earthwisefarm.htm
Transit service involves joining with a 601 “SOUTH DELTA” to the “SOUTH DELTA EXCHANGE BAY 2″, then taking the cute little C89 “BOUNDARY BAY” bus to the stop nearest the entrance. Best to consult TransLink for details.
Ian Alexander Martin [
Entries (RSS)
Enjoyed the photostory, particularly where you did a colour reversal, that was effective. The plants I bought at the garden’s open house are doing well. The property is part of the Spettifore Lands, over which there was great debate a few years ago. The usual situation of a family farm no longer making money and the family wanting to subdivide for housing. When I first visited in the neighbourhood it was still a dairy farm and the cows were quite interested in people walking by.
Please note that the time the lady above first visited the farm was during the Pre-Cambrian Era.