Oasis On A Street Corner
Finding a Zen moment in the garden

By Michelle Livingstone
(click images to enlarge)

It's the end of February as I write this, and as we enter the season of renewal, growth, and let’s face it - hope, what better way to do so than to interview the delightful Micheal Blanke, this month’s unsung hero.

**Micheal Blanke in his winter garden.** *(Michelle Livingstone Photos)*

Micheal is the custodian of one of the West End’s Green Streets gardens, an initiative which began in Mount Pleasant in 1994, with just 15 plots, and has since sprouted roots all over the city, boasting around 500 plots and volunteers at the last count, and designed not only to calm traffic roundabouts and curb bulges across Vancouver, but to also help manage rainwater, provide wildlife habitats, and improve green spaces for the local community.

As we sit down, Micheal admits that he doesn't really like the spotlight and prefers to let his personality shine through his nature plot, which is a wonderful mix of perennials, annuals, scent and colour, plus a bit of ‘tinkly tinkly’ (such as gnomes and flamingos) thrown in to create extra interest.

Micheal has had this plot for three years now, and once the days get longer and blooms are more the norm, he spends most days pottering about, getting his hands dirty for the sake of sharing delight.

One of his favourite plants is Salvia microphylla, more commonly and perhaps saucily known as 'Hot Lips', a perennial shrub of the sage family from Mexico. Found in several colour palettes (Micheal's favourite being red), this intriguingly scented, gregarious plant changes its look according to the season, beginning with full red in spring, then as the weather heats up, the flowers turn white with red lips, hence the nickname. During the full surge of summer, they turn completely white. As summer ends, the bicolor aspect returns, and they end as they started with a full flush of red. As an extra treat for the senses, with their tubular shape, they are a firm favourite with those fairies of the sky - hummingbirds.

Unfortunately, it is not just hummingbirds that like to pop by and spend time in his garden; a few wily crows also show up, generally to uproot all his newly planted petunias. This seems to be an ongoing and silent battle of wills, with Micheal continually replanting the petunias and the crows mocking him as soon as he leaves.

Micheal’s 12 by 18 foot oasis sits at the north-west corner of Bute and Comox streets. Three years ago, before Micheal took on the guardianship of the plot, the space, like most of the original Green Street start-ups, was generic, utilizing grasses and hardy plants that were low maintenance. Micheal now works carefully, each year, injecting colour, scent, height and depth, to entice folks and fauna alike.

Michael explains: “You have to change [plants] because if the tree is growing, it's going to create more shade.

“So you have to change your approach, which I've learned. And I plant mostly in pots. I can move them around, they're not too heavy, and I can manipulate the soil much easier. Because of the geography, there is basically a drainage ditch, which is acting as irrigation, so they have a lot of rocks on one half and then the tree trunk, the tree roots on the other side, so it's very difficult to dig a hole. The tree wasn't as big as it is now, so it was much easier. It's what they call a sweet gum tree, a nuisance, but a nice one. It has what they call monkey spurs, which are hard kernels with lots of spikes on them. They're all over the place, and they don't biodegrade very well.”

Micheal started his love for gardening many years ago, as a teenager, back in Montreal.

“There was a lady who lived next door, an older lady, who had sort of taken me under her wing,” he explains. “And she showed me the basics about gardening. She was sort of an advocate, knew the plants and what to plant where and so on. And I kind of got the bug at that point. Also, my mom and I have a connection with a green thumb, both of us. She comes from a farming family background. So maybe that's genetically how it kind of bled into my psyche.”

**Even in Winter the Plants Are Still Growing.**

Born in Montreal, to a mother who taught herself bookkeeping and accounting, and a father who was a commercial baker, Micheal grew up bilingual - not in French, but German. His family left the province for a new life in the West of Canada in 1977. Micheal describes this pivotal event in his life.

“It was right at the time when the Parti Québécois took power, so there was a massive English exodus out of the province. The political scenario was the separatists in Quebec, gaining political power with René Levesque. And so the French people had a voice. They were no longer in the background, in terms of who they were as a people. The prejudice towards the French by the English was reversed. You had trouble finding work because you didn't speak the language, or you didn't speak it well enough. That was one thing. After a while, when you did learn the language out of fear of not getting a job, you didn't have a French name. They started to impose more and more legislation that favoured the French rather than the English side. There was a bit of segregation, but we left before any of that was really starting to happen.”

I ventured that it was quite ironic that his parents, a young German couple from the Rhineland and Hanover, should move to the only completely French-speaking province in the whole of Canada; however, given this, I didn't hesitate to deliver my favourite phrase in the German language, ‘Ich habe Kopfschmerzen.’ And of course, Micheal knew it immediately. Answers on a Facebook postcard, please.

Although the move was dramatic, Micheal remembers the journey to Alberta with fondness. “My Dad moved ahead of us, and then we followed. I have to say that it was a lot of fun doing that three-day train ride across Canada.”

But the biggest impact on his life was his creative mother, who even now, at the grand old age of 92, and living alone in Penticton, knits, crochets, weaves on a loom, and even has her own spinning wheel.

On the note of family, he shares a fun adventure that he had with his younger brother.

“I remember going to Germany for eight weeks with my brother, wandering around the countryside, but without our parents. I was 18. We'd been there once or twice prior to that, but this was the first time we went on our own to visit the relatives on both sides of the family and did excursions with them, and that was a lot of fun.”

Micheal lived in Calgary for 15 years, with a brief sojourn in Winnipeg, finding his career working as a graphic artist, with a side in retail management and purchasing thrown in. He headed further west to British Columbia in 1992, and finally settled in the West End in 1994. Where he has remained happily ever since. Now retired, I ask him what a typical day might entail.

“I usually head down to my garden around 11.30 a.m. As the season progresses and the weather changes, I'll be down there practically every day. I can be there for two to three hours easily. It keeps me out of trouble. I enjoy the building and watching how things respond. And, of course, the joy of the people walking past, because it is out in the open. It's not something that's hidden. It lifts your spirits, it's something that's very sort of zen. And it gets you in touch, it centres you and then you see the results. Not only that, you get the passers-by who give you compliments every single day, especially in the summertime. I do it because I gravitated to it. This is what I should have done. It's a boat I missed in that I should have maybe gone into horticulture, botany, and the sciences in that direction. But you're not always given the guidance.”

With Micheal being a Westender, I ask him what he would do if he had a magic wand and was mayor for a day. He answers thus:

“Well, obviously, we'd have to really dig hard on the homeless situation, but a lot of cities are plagued with that. And it just doesn't seem that whatever we throw at it in terms of ideas, and I don't mean money, ideas and ways, nothing seems to work. And I think we have to really shut down and retool and maybe come up with something far more radical. We're trying too many band-aid approaches, and I think maybe we need to really get more aggressive about it, go to the source. But that's tough to do, because then you start stepping on too many toes. So it starts another cycle of, ‘Well, we tried that, and it didn't work.’ And it almost seems, and I sound pessimistic and cynical, but it's almost like there is no solution. Or there's no will to find a solution. I don't know which. But that's really what I would try to say, okay, as mayor for a day, let's hit that button.”

Although Micheal says he is fairly shy, his enthusiasm for conversation is energetic, so I carefully extract his one wish for the world.

“We need to show each other more compassion and understanding. We don't know how to reach out to each other and talk diplomatically. We throw a punch first and then ask questions. Just look at the Trump administration. We can't blame everything on Donald Trump, obviously, but he's given it a license. The poverty lines are widening all the time, and that's dangerous. The cronyism and what is going on in the States with corruption, open corruption is now starting to pop up everywhere. Then throw in all the other geopolitical problems, the flow of immigration left and right throughout Europe, and it raises tensions. As Carney said in his speech, ‘There’s a rupture happening’.”

And we end, as we began, in the spirit of hope, and I ask Micheal for one piece of advice to pass on to a youngster.

“Always follow your passion. Don't, like I did, not pursue what you thought you should have. Regardless of what people say. I always dreamed of playing piano, but never went ahead and did it. I was always a bit too apprehensive and didn't want to take too many chances. I wish I had pursued that more.”

And just like that, our interview with this charming ‘introvert’, who offers a floral handshake to the world, is over. And off he goes, chasing crows, tending the land and speaking softly through the eyes of nature.