POTS & PLANTS
/by Beth Lopez
(James Oakes photos / click images to enlarge)
A large building on Bute Street, The Stafford, affectionately known as 888 Bute, is shaded by five one hundred year-old tulip trees. They are historic and beautiful and provide shade and cooling to the suites inside. However, the shade is not a good thing for anything trying to grow below them. Grass couldn’t grow on the boulevard and the soil became either hard packed or, in the rainy season, mud.
Deb Schmitz was looking down from her balcony in 2011, and commented to her husband that the boulevard looked terrible and they had to do something. She knew he was the person for the job.
Deb`s husband, Wolf Schmitz, is an accomplished stone mason. He started learning stonework as a teenager growing up outside of Montreal. After serving in the Canadian Forces, he took night courses in landscape design. After moving to Vancouver, he took a U.B.C. Garden Design program.
Wolf soon had a vision of what the boulevard could be and took his ideas to the building strata council. In the summer of 2011 Wolf and a group of residents worked together to create his vision. They brought in soil, and stones. Wolf could get wholesale prices as a landscaper and the strata chipped in. He created two diagonal walkways from the street to the sidewalk and some stone surrounds for rock gardens. The group of committed gardeners pushed wheelbarrows of rock and soil, planted shade loving plants like ferns and hostas, and watered and watched over the new garden.
The next year, Esther, working on behalf of the building residents, applied for a Greenest City Grant of $1,000 to create an irrigation system for the garden. They received the grant and bought the hose and hose reel to maintain the garden. For the next few years, they applied for other grants to add to the garden and received them.
Sophie, working on the roses in the sunny corner of the garden.
Finally the group decided that the amount of work demanded by the application and the reporting processes wasn’t worth it. They knew that the maintenance and evolution of the garden was an ongoing commitment and needed ongoing financial support.
Now the strata counsel has a line item in their budget for the gardens. There are two paid part time gardeners-groundskeepers, Sophie and James, who maintain the garden.
Wolf continued to add new elements over the years. There is a stone planter on the corner of Bute and Stovold Lane that he put in one weekend. It features a large mature banana plant that people notice regularly. A later addition, the low stone planters at the corner of Bute and Barclay, on the building side and the boulevard side, provide beauty and maybe a low spot for a rest.
The Barclay garden, along the Barclay boulevard was planted next. This garden is in full sun. There were fruit trees planted along the boulevard, knowing that the fruit would be enjoyed by pedestrians and animals as well as residents. Occasionally, plants are dug up and taken away or herbs are harvested. This happened several times the year they planted a vegetable garden. The residents shrug and accept, “someone needed it more than we do”.
The stone planter at Bute and Stovold.
As a landscaper and stonemason, Wolf was long interested in horticultural therapy. He did training at Providence Farm near Duncan. He submitted a proposal to Coast Mental Health to create a social enterprise to provide work opportunities to struggling folks and ran it successfully for several years. "People need a sense of purpose." This idea was Wolf's driving motivation.
Wolf believed in working for the community, not just the community of residents in the building, but the wider community of the West End. Bute Street does not have much vehicle traffic, blocked as it is at both ends from Davie and Robson, but it is a pedestrian corridor. Wolf wanted to make this part of the walk enjoyable to all passing by. He later noted that people told him they had changed their walking routes just to go past the gardens.
The pride of the neighborhood and a delight to passers-by.
Many interested residents continue to add plants and care for the garden. Darryl and Sandy were very involved as long as they lived in the building. Now Don, Esther, Brenda and others add their efforts. They have varying degrees of expertise from an extensive background in horticulture to just a keen interest in growing things but each one makes their own contribution to the whole .
Bridget, Dave and Kate ensure that the little stone birdbath is kept clean and supplied with a yellow rubber ducky.
The courtyard planters are replanted seasonally.
Some maintain the large planters full of seasonal blooms in the courtyard entrance. Care has to be taken to choose plants that are shade tolerant. I remembered my Dad’s lesson of the bloodroot that I took from the shaded forest and expected it to thrive in full sun. Those Ontario bloodroots would have loved the shaded planters in the courtyard.
They feel the garden is probably 90 percent established, but bulbs are still planted in the fall and new additions keep it interesting.
Wolf has moved away from Vancouver, but his legacy lives on. The residents at 888 Bute continue to enjoy and maintain the gardens, and West Enders are nourished by the beauty as they pass.
Every year the garden changes, as all gardens do. New plants are added, plants are moved, and experiments are tried. But the stone foundations, laid down by Wolf are still there. The vision of a garden to beautify and serve the community continues.
