Where is Canada's smallest public garden?
At the end of our street there is a small plaza that is part of a narrow pathway that runs along the 15-foot high sound wall next to Crowchild Trail (In Calgary, we call our major roads “trails,” as in many cases that is what they once were).
Big Eyesore!
Since moving to the neighbourhood 30+ years ago, I have watched this plaza deteriorate. First, the bench’s wooden seat rotted out, so the City removed the bench and it, or a replacement, were never returned. Then the struggling sapling in the middle of the plaza died and it too wasn’t replaced. The trees along the sound wall gradually became more and more scraggly, while the ground beneath them became weed infested (with noxious weeds I might add).
What could have been a little urban oasis slowly became a big eyesore.
One day, while cleaning up some litter, I grabbed the dead sapling and to my surprise I could just lift it out of its tiny tree well. That was it! Enough was enough! Something needed to be done.
This is what the Grand Trunk Garden located at the west end of the 2400 block 6th Ave NW Calgary looked like in the spring of 2023. It is 40 inches by 40 inches.
This is what the plaza at the end of our street looked like for many years. It was a disgusting weed patch. Looking at it now, I wonder why I didn’t intervene earlier.
Eyesore becomes a garden!
Being early spring, I thought hmmm…what if I planted some annuals in the tree well and create a tiny garden. And that was the beginning of creating Canada’s smallest public garden.
FYI: I don’t know if it is truly our country’s smallest garden, but at 40 inches by 40 inches, it has to be close. I also don’t know if there is technically a definition of what constitutes a garden, but I thought having 6 or more different plant types should qualify it as a garden.
Link: Defining a miniature garden
So, I dug up the tree well as best I could, leaving the remains of the tree roots in the garden. Then I went back to my home garden (9 houses away) and dug up some perennials to transplant to what I was now calling the “Grand Trunk Garden.” (FYI: Our community was originally known as Grand Trunk and there is a Grand Trunk Park at the other end of the street, and the historic Grand Trunk cottage school is also nearby, so it seemed like a reasonable name.)
The six plants included rhubarb (it will grow anywhere and it comes up early), as well as other hardy plants like – chives, day lilies, Heliopsis or “Prairie Sunset,” periwinkle, arctic daisy and my favourite spring perennial – Leopard’s Bane. I later got a Lambs Ear from a neighbour who was redoing her garden and offered some free plants on Facebook’s Marketplace. To make it look like a real garden I grabbed some old stumps and rocks from our garden to fill in the space. I even picked up two white plastic chairs free (again from Facebook Marketplace) and put them out each morning and took them in each night to make the garden and plaza more welcoming.
To my surprise everything grew and by the middle of the summer there was an attractive tiny garden in the middle of the tiny inlaid brick plaza. I often left out some sidewalk chalk and people would write things or draw some flowers. We even wrote on the sound wall “Welcome To Grand Trunk Garden.”
I was also amazed at just how busy the pathway was, especially with dog walkers. Over the summer I got to meet many new neighbours, all of whom were very appreciative of the garden. It was too much fun!
Summer 2023
I was eager to see what plants would over winter and was pleased when everything but the Lamb’s Ear survived. I replaced it with a bleeding heart and added more ground cover plants. I also contacted our City Councillor Terry Wong to see if we could get the drab green garbage can replaced with one of the new ones that have colourful flower motif decals. He quickly put me in touch with the local parks staff and soon we had a colourful garbage can wrapped with a hollyhocks decal that enhanced the garden theme of the space.
Chalk art by unknown artist
And with a contact at Parks, I requested the City spray all the noxious weeds that had taken over the tiny forest along the sound wall and lo’ and behold, a few weeks later they sprayed the weeds and most of them died. Since then, I have tried to stay on top of the weeds as they do try to make a comeback.
Another development was the neighbour immediately adjacent to the garden invited me to use their outdoor water outlet to water the garden so I no longer had to carry two watering cans full of water from my house every couple of days. This allowed me to expand the garden into the forest to hopefully keep down the weeds and add more colour to the plaza.
I trimmed all the dead branches that I could and cleaned out some areas where I thought some plants might grow. I added a cedar tree from our garden that was struggling, moved the stumps from the tiny garden that was now full to created small vignettes in the forest using shade plants like Joe Pye Weed (“a good weed”), hostas, ornamental grasses, Liguria, Goat’s Beard (donate by a neighbour who has a landscaping business) and even some Black-eyed Susans, Hollyhocks (donated by a neighbour on the West Hillhurst Facebook page) and Irises in the sunnier spots. And yes, some more rhubarb too. I grabbed a few more stumps from a friend who had cut down a tree in their backyard – they’re now pedestals for pots in the “forest.”
The seating has been upgraded to two red plastic Muskoka chairs with a side table and one or two plastic children’s chairs to make it even more inviting for people to sit and enjoy the garden for bit.
The “thank you’s” from neighbours and strangers walking by continued.
The cheerful new city garbage can.
The dingy old garbage can surrounded by weeds.
Thanks to a neighbour who does flower arrangements out of her garage we had nice floral arrangement on the plaza this fall and winter.
Summer 2024
I am not quite sure what’s in store for the Grand Trunk Garden this summer. Maybe some permanent signage. I have two wooden chairs, some 6 foot black iron rods and a big red hoola-hoop found while flaneuring back alleys this winter that might hold some potential. I am curious how the plants in the forest area will survive the winter. And someone has mysteriously added an altar-like installation with two tiny rock sculptures. Who knows it might become a community garden.
The plaza looks very inviting in the spring when the May Day tree is in full bloom.
Last Word
Like any garden, the “Grand Trunk Garden” will always be a work in progress. I will keep you posted.