Boulevard garden growing joy during pandemic summer days in Regina
Heidi Atter | CBC News | Posted: September 4, 2020 11:00 AM | Last Updated: September 4, 2020
Garden in the Crescents grows pizza ingredients, strawberries, pumpkins and community
This is the final piece in CBC Saskatchewan's Good News Saskatchewan series. See all the stories featuring innovators during the pandemic at cbc.ca/lovesk.
In the quiet Crescents area of Regina's Cathedral neighbourhood, people walk their small dogs, cars pass slowly and the sun shines through the high-arched trees.
But every evening, the boulevard springs to life. Laughter rings out as neighbours chatter and water their community garden — the one place they can be together during a pandemic.
"The idea of gardening during the pandemic sort of came very organically at seven o'clock. Neighbours were gathering and pounding on pots and pans and somehow it morphed from that into 'Let's do some more work on the boulevard,'" Sharon Pratchler said.
Pratchler looks at the garden with pride. It stretches about 100 metres from Leopold Crescent to 19th Avenue along Angus Boulevard. At one end is strawberries, everything you'd need for tea — including some teacups — and flowers. At the other, sunflowers reach seven feet into the sky and little pumpkins line the edges of the concrete barrier protecting them from the street.
The boulevard garden had started smaller in 2019. Pratchler and her neighbours wanted to beautify it and added more plants. She said the city told them to take it down, but they successfully argued to keep it.
It has only grown during the pandemic, and so has the meaning to the gardeners and their non-gardener neighbours. Pratchler said it's a close community. Neighbours used to visit each other's front porches, getting together frequently before the pandemic hit.
"When we had to go social distance, we missed visiting with each other," she said.
Now the green area acts as a meeting place, complete with a prairie flower garden, perennial garden, a prairie resilience garden, a peace garden and a pizza garden. The peace garden is planted on top of a large peace symbol. The pizza garden is on the other end andd features pizza ingredients including basil, thyme, tomatoes and peppers.
In this time of physical distancing, Pratchler said it gives a safe destination people can go to see what's happening and check in on each other while being physically distant.
"We know the length of a hoe and that's a pretty good frame of reference. So we naturally keep our distance and we're able to because we're on the boulevard," she said.
"It also is a real sign of community at the time of a pandemic that people are drawing together, not apart," she said. "It's about kind of supporting each other through this time."
Jeannie Mah's laugh can be heard from the other end of the boulevard. The strong woman is a self-proclaimed non-gardener. She and her husband had a different reason for stopping by. She said she's the digger for the group.
"I dug wherever they wanted some garden. I just come and dig," Mah said with a laugh. "We actually had a pile of compost just from the kitchen … so we're the diggers and the composters … but I'm not a gardener, so it's really nice that somebody else takes over after that."
Mah and her husband were staying to themselves, not travelling and following all the public health guidelines in the beginning of the pandemic, but it was lonely.
"We weren't seeing anybody," Mah said. "So we would meet out here … and these people became my community."
It also introduced Mah to new people, including Pratchler.
Mah stops by in the evenings and picks fresh vegetables for her evening salad.
"Just seeing more greenery here, just seeing activity on this neglected boulevard, I think it brings joy to people," she said. "We've watched it grow. They've watched it grow. They've yelled encouragement to us. It's a nice central meeting point."
Pandemic education: growing the love of gardening for children
As Pratchler waters, the group of about seven people talk about the garden's progress. In one evening about five dogs stopped by to say hello with their owners close behind. Children pop by at times as well, she said.
"Kids can learn about gardening or they can explore the garden, see the purple beans and who knew there were purple beans?" Pratchler said with a laugh.
"The sparkle in a kid's eye when they grow something is amazing to see."
Mah said she hopes people stopping by the garden see that it is possible to grow your own garden and be more self-sufficient.
"Because we weren't going out all the time we had this time to concentrate on food, which is one of the most important things to being alive," she said. "The more local, the better it is for us too."
Mah hopes to see more vegetables and fruit in the garden next year. Pratchler has plans to expand the strawberry area and another gardener, Florence, hopes to grow corn. Pratchler said she would love to give families their own garden plots down the side of the boulevard someday.
"It's really satisfying because you have to always look for something good to come out of any situation," Pratchler said. "What we've chosen to do is really something positive."