Green Challenge
How do Calgary’s gardens and horticulture compare on the national stage?
By Rebecca Sullivan & Bart Beaty
Photography By Bryce Meyer
Urban Optimist: The April showers are bringing us May flowers . . .
City Cynic: Hold it right there. It’s April snowstorms more likely, and expecting May flowers is more than a tad optimistic. With the short growing season, dry climate, and cooler nights, Calgary is not exactly a gardener’s paradise.
Urban Optimist: OK, so we’re not an urban rainforest, but there are a lot of things to be excited about when it comes to Calgary
and its horticulture. A real gardening connoisseur likes a good challenge, and certainly the city offers that. But it doesn’t take much to find some beautiful options to create a lush Prairie landscape.
City Cynic: If by lush you mean deep browns and yellows . . .
Urban Optimist: The problem with your thinking is that you’re obsessed with the Eastern promise of green lawns and perfect little tea roses. You need to open your eyes to the beauty that exists right in front of you. Take our official flower. How could we not adopt something called the “wild rose”? Shooting up in defiance of the snow, their short but hardy stems well-protected from wind and cold, with a deep red bloom that only heightens the intensity of the natural browns and yellows that you so casually disdain; to my mind we couldn’t have picked a better floral ambassador.
City Cynic: I’m not denying that there are some pretty plants that grow here, but with our zone 3 climate and rapid seasonal changes, there just isn’t the same kind of horticultural range that you find elsewhere.
Urban Optimist: But that’s not a reason to give up on the Calgary landscape. It’s more likely another example of what sets this city apart from the others. Despite the justifiable complaints of urban sprawl, indoor living, and car dependency, Calgary has developed some incredible parks and gardens where we can really showcase the diversity of our native plants. And, unlike most other major cities in North America, we’ve managed to hold the developers at bay from large swaths of land that protect the environment and preserve Calgary’s natural heritage.
City Cynic: If you’re trying to liken Nose Hill Park to New York’s Central Park or Parc Mont Royal in Montreal, then please stop now. These other parks are historical monuments to an important era in urban development, each designed by Frederick Law Olmstead in the 19th Century in response to issues of cramped living and the health and welfare of the poorest members of the city. By contrast, Nose Hill is about hundred years too late in serving as an example of staving off rapid overdevelopment.
Urban Optimist: Better late than never. And Nose Hill has a totally different and far more modern philosophy of letting nature be nature than those other urban parks. Nose Hill may not have conservatories, oriental walkways, rose gardens, or even merry-
go-rounds and fountains in it, but isn’t that a good thing?
City Cynic: Still, people in the inner city have to drive to Nose Hill, or to the other big conservation area, Fish Creek Provincial Park, in order to enjoy it — how’s that for outdoor living? A good urban park needs to be accessible and easy to explore, not a daylong excursion.
Urban Optimist: Well, when you’re talking inner-city, that’s where you get all the gardening bells and whistles that you seem to be desiring. There’s the whole green belt along the Bow and Elbow rivers, but if you’re craving some hardcore horticulture, then why not spend a day at the Dorothy Harvie Botanical Gardens? They’re commemorating their 20th anniversary this year, and they’ve got lots to celebrate. It’s not just the pathways and conservatory, but there’s also a master gardener program, an on-site education program, and even testing laboratories where they experiment with new varieties and gardening strategies for Calgarians. You could spend the entire day there without ever even seeing an animal and still feel you got your monies worth.
City Cynic: Well, at least you didn’t try to trot out that old stalwart, the Devonian Gardens. It seems to have sprung directly from the mind of Bridezilla. If you’re saying that the strength of Calgary’s gardening culture is its pride and commitment to native plants and distinctive growing patterns, then why has the City put so much into something so over-the-top?
Urban Optimist: To each their own, I guess, but I agree that it has about as much to do with Calgary as would a bamboo grove on my front lawn. But it comes from another era, before Calgary recognized the value of playing to its strengths. But just because the City took one misstep 30 years ago, is no reason for the rest of us to follow suit.
City Cynic: So what you’re saying is but with the Kentucky bluegrass, in with the fescue, and let Calgary be Calgary?
Urban Optimist: Hey, I never promised you a rose garden.
