Devonian Gardens Calgary

The Devonian Gardens in Calgary have been undergoing a facelift for some time.  They just reopened last week and are located downtown in The CORE shopping centre (essentially a big mall).  They are on the fourth level right beside the food court and will provide a much needed oasis during Calgary's cold winters.  I took a bunch of photos, so I hope you enjoy the virtual tour below.

Civic Garden Complex Tour

Today James and I decided to check out the Civic Garden Complex tour. To be perfectly honest, I thought this would be some small event with a few people and self-guided tours. I was completely wrong. With some creative parking somehow the parking lot capacity was doubled. You can see the little bit of a clusterfudge below:



Upon entering we were greeting with a free herb! I took a coriander and James received a sweet basil. There were a tonne of booths set up with information on plants, insects and general wildlife. There were also some seeds and plants for sale, both indoor and outdoor. The total booth area was about 5 times what you see below.



The greenhouses were built in three main phases from the mid to late 1900s. They grow most of the plants for the nearby Springbank Park and for decorative beds throughout London, Ontario. All of the greenhouses have sunscreens, fans for air circulation and heating pipes. The yellow sticky papers are for mite control. After the woman giving the tour mentioned that, I may have muttered "I f!cking hate those mites!" Which apparently was a little more than a mutter because Jame started laughing. Sometimes I have trouble modulating the volume of my voice... It's what makes me special. ;)



Attached to the complex is The Samuel R. Manness Conservatory which was donated in memoriam to the grandfather of Keith Manness, an avid gardener. Although it feels larger than the UWO Tropical Room, the planting is nowhere near as lush and their is a lot of open space.



We spent about an hour in the complex before returning to some beautiful spring weather...

Vancouver Desert Plant Society Show & Sale at VanDussen

Today was quite the day!  I met up with my uncle at the Vancouver Desert Plant Society Show & Sale at VanDussen Gardens.  I saw a tonne of really interesting plants and ended up touring the Gardens as well.  I also got pictures of some other community gardens along an abandoned track in the Kitsilano area.

Finally I spent three hours at Cottonwood Community gardens helping with raised beds.  A portion of the gardens has been designed with wheel chair access in mind.  The beds are elevated to the proper height, there is room to turn around and a small rock layer will be placed so the wheels don't sink down.

The plant show was awesome and I ended up with a plant that my uncle purchased for me.  I'm quite excited.  The gardens at VanDussen were gorgeous and really worth a look.  All my veggies but my tomatoes have also started sprouting!  I can already taste them.

My day is best summed up with pictures.  Please check the album link at the end of these few to see them all.  There are some really interesting succulents!



To See the Rest of My Amazing Pictures Click Here! Here are some other people's photos of VanDussen and the Desert Plant Show:The Dandelion Wrangler Garden Therapy 

Bloom Day May - Strathcona Plots

Today I went to Strathcona Park and to see the community garden plots.  They seem like a good size.  They were brought to my attention by Stevie from Garden Therapy.  It's only $10/year to become a member plus $5/year for a plot.  This includes water and overhead costs.  I'm interested but might wait a few more weeks until I have things straightened around.

They have started a new triangle of plots to keep up with the demand.  You can see some volunteers hard at work setting things up below.

Seeing as I have nothing blooming, I also nabbed some photos.  The older portion is filled with a mixture of vegetables and flowers.  It's really nice even just to walk through.  Now I need to continue with the job search!

Update

 The last week has been great!  We've visited a lot of the free sites around Vancouver.  We officially restarted our job search yesterday.  We have enough money for about two months but are a little stressed out regardless.  The structure below is Bloedel Conservatory.  It was $7 each to get in so we skipped it.  We'll save it for the winter.  :)

It really is beautiful here.  Every day since we've arrived there has been nothing but sun.  We've visited Burnaby Mountain Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, Simon Fraser University, the Science Centre, the Athlete's Village, and many other areas.  Apparently Vancouver's nickname is Hollywood North because it has the biggest movie industry in Canada.  We've seen several areas were Battlestar Galactica, Caprica and Stargate have been filmed.  We're Sci-Fi fans so it was super exciting!

Seeing as we have limited funds and are in a basement, I'm thinking my posts for the next month or two will be mostly of things I see during walks.  There are many plants I don't recognize and this will help me learn and introduce you to new ones as well.  Take this spiny thing below for example.  I have no idea what it is other than a holly of some kind...

Today we went to Queen Elizabeth Park (all the pictures, it's on a hill) and a Home Depot Garden Centre.  The prices for plants like Japanese Maples are half what they are in London!  You can buy a palm with a 1m (3ft) trunk for $85.  I thought they'd be around $150.  There are baby ones for only $10.  It was difficult for me to resist, but I have to for now!  I also want this huge Gunnera mericata below.

I also updated the background seeing as I no longer work at a greenhouse.  Feedback would be appreciated!  I took the photo of the Japanese Maple today and I think it works well.  I had to darken the text a little because I noticed some readability issues.  The page bar also looks a little out of place.  I might need to make a new one.  Please note I didn't make the paper texture.  It can be found here free for use.  I'll leave you with a last photo of Queen Elizabeth Park and will upload some of our others over the next few days.  I'll also try and comment more, I promise!

PS.  I'm having trouble decided what I want to do with my life.  Any thoughts?  I'm thinking I should design vertical urban farms.  It's a little niche at this point though, plus no capital to invest...  :(

Operation Relocation - Day 5 - Saskatoon to Edmonton to Jasper

The original plan for today was to go to Edmonton and stay there for the night.  You can see from our route today that we ended up in Jasper.  I think this may have been the most eventful day of my life!

Once again, we spent most of our journey under clouds.  As we continued driving we started to notice accumulated snow on the ground.

Operation Relocation - Day 4 - Winnipeg to Regina to Saskatoon

The original plan for today was to only go as far as Regina.  We felt industrious so we ended up in Saskatoon.  This will shorten our trip to Edmonton tomorrow so we can spend some more time at the greenhouses there and in the West Edmonton Mall!

The day started out with partial clouds in Winnipeg.  This quickly became rain which stayed with us for most of the drive to Regina.  For some reason when people said this area was flat, I envisioned a plane stretching on to infinite.  This isn't the case and there are some slight contours to the area.  That van in the last pictures is just plain impressive.  There were actually several vehicles like this along the drive.

In Regina the rain stopped but clouds remained.  There were a few sunny breaks and we visited the Legislative Park area downtown.  All of these prairie cities have had Dutch Elm.  I had no idea how great these trees looked because they have been more or less wiped out in South-Western Ontario.  There is much more after the page break to click 'Delve Deeper'.

Operation Relocation - Day 3 - Thunder Bay to Winnipeg

Today we finally left Ontario and made it to Winnipeg in Manitoba!  This is actually a great city and stole the show for the day.  It is well planned and we moved through downtown during rush hour with no trouble at all.  For a city with over 633 000 people, this is quite the feat.  Below you can see the route we took for the day.

The trip to Winnipeg was surprisingly uneventful.  The scenery was relatively nice but it rained most of the time.  This area is dotted with hundreds of lakes.  Below you can see a few of the more interesting sites.  We've both decided that we are thoroughly city people and although small town are fine to visit, we need our urbanity.

Within a few minutes of crossing the border it the rocks were gone and the landscape was entirely flat.  It was almost uncomfortable.  The 50/50 split coniferous and deciduous gave way to nearly entirely deciduous forests.  In Winnipeg we went through downtown.  There were large trees everywhere!  It was really delightful.  We also saw the Royal Canadian Mint but it was too small in the picture so I didn't upload it.

Next we decided to take a look at Assiniboine Park.  This is a great area that includes many different gardens and activities.  Below are some photos of the park including the sculpture garden and zoo.  These areas would be simply gorgeous in the summer!  The first picture below is a large building in the centre of the park.

Leo Mol Sculpture Garden & English Garden (there must have been over 50 sculptures in total)

Zoo.  A peacock in Winnipeg?  Apparently.  Too charming.

Tomorrow we're not entirely sure what's happening.  We're either going to Regina, Saskatoon or both.  It depends on the sites in each city and we'll figure it out later tonight.  This is by far the funnest day this far!