Dal students leave lasting impact at memorial park

Landscape architecture and landscape horticulture students recently had a hands-on opportunity to leave a lasting impact in Bass River at the Veterans Memorial Park.

Voted the best memorial park in Canada in 2013 by Communities in Bloom, the Veterans Memorial Park is a living memorial to those who have served and continue to serve in Canada’s Armed Forces and Peacekeeping.

The Dalhousie Agricultural College’s Faculty of Agriculture was approached two years ago to help renovate the horticultural components of the 12-yearold garden. The resulting partnership involves student interns and students of landscape and horticultural programs on the Bible Hill agricultural campus.

“We are entering the second season of the partnership,” said Jeff Morton, senior instructor in the Department of Plant, Food and Environmental Sciences, in a release to Colchester Wire. “The themed gardens are meant to be an area of solitude to respect the fallen.”

Three intersecting gardens and eight black granite monuments remind visitors of the horrors of war, the need to remember and to hope for peace. Red maples commemorate the Nova Scotian soldiers lost in Afghanistan.

“We were able to secure a donation of six trees that will be used to commemorate the loss of the Stalker 22 Helicopter crew from the HMCS Fredericton in Greece,” added Morton. “Families (travelled) from Quebec for the ceremony.

These are significant trees that will make an instant statement at the park” and were in place prior to the International Peacekeepers ceremony on May 28.

Jeff and his students have plans to develop a bridge that will be in place by 2025 and have been working hard to develop a volunteer base and recently had 36 Naval Reserve Squadron/cadets spend a day at the park.