Gardening
For one new Winnipeg homeowner, her large grassy suburban yard was a garden in waiting
Lawn Gone: This large yard in suburban Winnipeg was the perfect blank slate. Chantal Antonakis had the vision and passion to fill it
For Chantal Antonakis, moving in to a new suburban house with a sprawling yard presented a fantastic opportunity. “I remember looking out my window that winter before I started my garden. We’re talking Winnipeg winter: very cold, very flat, just white and really pretty bleak,” she says now. “I started to imagine what I would like to see come spring.”
That was 2011, and her garden was an expansive blank canvas. “We have a large front yard that wraps around the side of the house and extends to a space in the back. It made for a lot of room to garden. I learned a lot that first year. I just wanted to plant some basics, but even before I could do that, I had to do a bunch of research. You know, what grows where, what needs sun, how much shade is tolerable. What do you try in such a short growing season?
She comes by her passion for gardening naturally. “I grew up in the country, and my mom has always had a huge kitchen garden. My grandmother too. One year my mom gave my brother and me each a row of our own to care for. In the fall, my flowers were in the floral display at the local fair. I was so pleased.” Over the next few years, Antonakis gradually increased the size of her plot: it now wraps around the side of the house and into the small back space (totalling more than 230 square metres). “I’m pretty serious about plotting it all out. I pull out my graph paper and plan it in detail and to scale. I add photos and lists and notes to myself. I watch it change and mature.”
As the garden was expanding, so was her family, with the addition of two boys, now 2 and 4. That’s why last year she added a raised bed for a vegetable garden right outside the kitchen door. “We didn’t create a play area. Instead we decided to find creative ways for them to be in the garden, to play in the natural environment. We all tend it together. They love digging and finding worms and watering the plants. They’re learning about caterpillars and butterflies.” Her husband enjoys the garden too, “but he is not an active participant,” she says. “He is happiest looking at it when it is done.”
It is meant to be looked at: “Our front yard is visible from 270 degrees. Design is important to me. It has to be pleasing to the eye from many angles. I try to make sure that no matter where you are, it has a certain look — beautiful from all angles.”
Antonakis is so attuned to how others view her garden that she has made changes to suit neighbours’ tastes. “Early on I created a native plants garden, including some prairie grasses, which ended up overwhelming it a bit. I think some of the neighbours felt it was a bit untidy, so I tilled it under.” The wildflowers and native plants are now integrated into the garden as a whole. She is serious about creating an ecologically responsible garden. “I was born this way. I have always been concerned with the natural environment and our impact on it.” In 2017, she applied for and received her Canadian Wildlife Federation Garden Habitat certification. She never uses fertilizer, but swears by organic compost, worm castings, eggshells and, new last year, Sea Soil from British Columbia, made from fish and “forest fines” — composted bark and forest soils.
When asked for a favourite, she points to her roses; she has several different varieties. “And my yellow crown Itoh peony is absolutely stunning. I get a lot of compliments!” Her large inventory of native plants includes pollinator-friendly goldenrod and giant hyssop. “I always feel so fortunate to get swallowtail and monarch butterflies, so I plant what they need. And bees. Mason bees arrive first thing in the spring. I make sure there is something for them. Between the vegetables and the native species, we’ll have something here for the pollinators from spring through to the fall.”
Birds are plentiful in and about a spruce tree, an enormous poplar and a Manitoba maple on the property: nuthatches chickadees, owls, occasional ducks and a regular visit from a pileated woodpecker. The suburban wildlife visitors include “skunks, raccoons, foxes and hungry rabbits,” she says.
Now, moving into summer 2019, in place of that flat bleak space, “there’s something beautiful to look at,” relishes Antonakis. “And there’s the satisfaction that you helped bring it into being.”
To learn more about the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s Garden Habitat certification program, visit cwf-fcf.org