OUR TOWN:

150th Celebration Garden, Silver Springs

one thousand bulbs; 400 contestants; 150 winners; 15 volunteers; a little rain; a lot of sun—and voilà! One of the loveliest birthday gifts any country could hope for is about to be unwrapped in northwest Calgary. Last year, the folks at Silver Springs Community Association, the Botanical Gardens of Silver Springs, and the Edible Garden Group joined together to throw their collective hat in the ring for a chance to win an official tie to the Flagship 150th Celebration Garden Promenade in Niagara, Ont.—a very big deal, particularly for the patriotic green-thumb set (they are legion). “We entered the contest on a lark,” says Silver Spring resident Liz McKay, a tenant of the Edible Gardens and volunteer with the Botanical Gardens. Lark or not, their application was strong enough to win them one of 150 prestigious spots across the country. “We feel so fortunate to have been chosen as one of four gardens in Calgary by the Canadian Garden Council,” says McKay.

It was one of those wins that, after the initial thrill wore off, might have given less hardy contestants pause. The prize—in addition to a symbolic link to the country’s mothership tulip garden—was 1,000 bulbs donated by P.E.I.’s famous seed vendor, Veseys (the same company decked Niagara out with 25,000 of the same). No doubt, to the uninitiated onlooker, the victory party looked a lot like, well, work. Over the course of a week last October, McKay and 14 other volunteers planted 500 “Red Impression” and 500 “White Cloud Hakuun” tulip bulbs in a patch of earth known as the Half Moon Garden, previously home to various annuals.

That garden sits within the neighbourhood’s larger Botanical Gardens, an idyllic, privately maintained, 20,000-square-foot Eden in the northeastern pocket of Silver Springs; it’s free, open to the public and deserves a higher profile in this city—it takes dozens of volunteers up to 6,000 hours every year to maintain its 12 eclectic spaces, including a Shakespeare Garden featuring only plants mentioned in the bard’s works.

As for this most recent addition to the gardens, why tulips rather than geraniums, peonies or anything else? Tulips, it turns out, are not only an international symbol of friendship but have long held special significance in Canada. Following the Second World War, the Dutch royal family sent 100,000 bulbs to Ottawa to thank us for harbouring Princess Julianna during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

On Saturday, the 150th Tulip Celebration Garden will be officially unveiled, complete with local dignitaries, a ribbon-cutting, fiddlers, a performance of “Oh, Canada” by a neighbourhood choir and one very large cake. And don’t worry, there aren’t any more bulbs left to plant at this celebration, so you can leave your trowel at home.