The Forestry Farm, formerly the Sutherland Forest Nursery Station, has been a meeting place for Saskatoon residents throughout its history, a destination for picnics, weddings, and social gatherings.
The Nursery Station, along with producing trees and conducting research, was also a demonstration landscape to show the public what could be grown in this climate. In keeping with this tradition, both to be open to visitors as well as to demonstrate what can be grown, the Saskatchewan Perennial Society developed and maintains two gardens in the park.
In the mid-1990s, Robin Smith, a past president and founding member of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society as well as a landscape architect by profession, imagined a public meditation garden. He passed away before his dream could become a reality, but the Saskatchewan Perennial Society was determined to make Robin’s dream a reality and convinced the Saskatoon Zoo and Forestry Farm Park to set aside land to be developed as the Robin Smith Gardens. At the time, the Foreman’s House was slated for demolition. It had a large vegetable garden as part of the original landscape. This entire area was enclosed by a caragana hedge to the north and east side, a Manitoba maple shelterbelt to the south and a lilac border to the west.
In 1998, the Meditation Garden was opened on a third of this space (the area where the Foreman’s House was located), after many hours of volunteer labour, earth moving by City staff, donations of plant material, and overall management by the Society. Grace Berg designed the gardens guided by Robin’s concept drawings. In addition to numerous hardy perennials, shrubs and trees, the Meditation Garden featured a dry stream bed and pond.
Because of vandalism and the chance for young people to move rocks and stones around, mosquito concerns by different managers over the years, the pond is no more.
A second garden, the Heritage Rose Garden, was started in 2003 and takes up the remaining two-thirds of the space. The garden was created to honour prairie plant breeders. City staff assisted in the laying out the bare bones of the garden by rototilling, moving soil and laying out the pathways, but the remaining work was completed by scores of volunteers.
Strong structural elements were incorporated into the garden from the beginning, with tall trellises and repurposed telephone poles to support vining plants. It was natural to also include some sculptures. Pronghorn, a bronze sculpture by the late Bill Epp, can be found peeking into the rose garden from the opening between the two gardens. Two sculptures by Don Foulds, Spiral Stack (a welded steel sculpture based on a spiral growth pattern) and Untitled (concrete over steel structure), are prominently featured.
The Heritage Rose Garden contains trees, shrubs and plant material developed by Percy Wright, who gardened in Moose Range but finally settled in Sutherland. Robert Simonet and Georges Bugnet, rose breeders from Alberta and Frank Skinner, a pioneer in plant breeding. It includes ‘Sutherland Golden’ elder, ‘Goldenlocks’ elder, and ‘Fuchsia Girl’, an apple seedling of ‘Royalty’, all developed by Les Kerr, the second Superintendent of the Sutherland Nursery Station. Many of the plants in both gardens are labelled (Public beware: kids love to move those labels around) with the name of the plant, and in the case of the roses, the plant breeder who developed and introduced them for sale to the public. The two gardens are still enclosed by the original lilac and caragana hedges.
During the creation of both gardens, volunteers learned about gardening on a grand scale; how to combine plants for colour, texture, shape, size and form; and more practical and simple things, like how deep to plant, how to divide perennials, the importance of mulch, and more. The gardens continue to be maintained by volunteers and are still learning gardens. From May until the beginning of October, volunteers meet for ‘Labour and Learn’ every third Saturday at 9 a.m. and work until noon, to weed, deadhead, prune and carry out other garden tasks that may be required. We have also added Weedy Wednesdays to our schedule from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., as we never get quite finished with what needs doing.
Both gardens are the backdrop to weddings and family photo sessions, artists’ paintings and individuals seeking a contemplative environment. The gardens are open year-round and can be found at the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo.
This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society.
(SPS; [email protected]). Check our website (www.saskperennial.ca) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/saskperennial) for a list of upcoming gardening events.
