Beautiful Gardens
Spirit Garden South Surrey Surrey, BC
Story by Shauna Dobbie, photos by Joan Mara 54 • 2021
Water trickles past marsh marigolds and stands of iris.
J
oan and Jon’s home in Surrey, BC, is next to a half-acre lot with a couple of retention ponds. The ponds were built by an engineer who wanted something a little different for the storm water basin in the neighbourhood. (Most are just a grassy depression that fills up when it rains or in the spring.) Several years ago, Joan was looking at the area, then wildly grown over, and thought: this could be a beautiful garden. She thought about it a lot, and eventually got permission to turn it into a garden. Fortunately, the two-pond engineer works for the city and was able to fund the material costs for a bit of infrastructure, so Joan and Jon just set about clearing the area in 2009. Removing the old stuff took a year. There were bram-
Issue 4
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