Are you the next Dr. Dirt?

IN BLOOM: Andy Davis in the Triangle Gardens in 2012. qathet Living file photo

Townsite’s Triangle Gardens

BY ANN NELSON

We’ve been talking a lot lately about how best to memorialize our beloved Dr. Dirt (Dr. Andy Davis) and his nearly 30 years of dedication and commitment to helping Townsite Heritage reclaim and maintain the Triangle Gardens.

In the 1980’s, the City reluctantly took on the Triangle Gardens when MacMillan-Bloedel was disposing of the last of the company’s property outside the Mill fences. The City recognized at the time that staff didn’t have the resources to create or maintain a park there.

By the early 90’s, Triangle Gardens had become overgrown with blackberries and broom and harboured a sort of ‘hobo’ camp amongst the bushes. It was fast becoming an embarrassment to the Townsite and to the efforts of the keeners in the Heritage Society who were promoting restoration as well as designation as a National Historic District.

When the Society approached the City about a partnership to provide restoration and maintenance for the gardens, a mutually beneficial relationship between the City, CUPE and the Society, on behalf of the neighbourhood, was entered into and we were off and running.

With work parties to hack back berries and broom and gather up the debris and needles, they were off.

The Society had set itself to annual fundraising and volunteer rallying and the gardens looked fairly respectable, when Dr. Andy and wife, Susan Hainstock, bought their home on Maple.

Andy proposed ideas and leadership for the development of the gardens into more of a ‘people’ friendly precinct, with more paths, bridges, benches, etc. We were all ecstatic!. Andy brought his energy and jungle-taming skills to a public project that benefitted literally everyone in the region, because it created an appealing ‘welcome mat’ to the National Historic District.

Andy and Susan also dove in and raised the funds themselves for an inground sprinkler system: voila, no more dragging hoses around all summer and skulking around in Managers’ Row yards ‘stealing’ water hookups from their hose bibs.

The partnership that developed between the Society and ‘Dr. Dirt’ and the City’s Parks and Rec crew allowed us to be able to count on the support needed from the City to deal with danger trees and windfall debris, even though they were still not in a position to create or maintain an additional ‘park.’

The Society could be assured that the work everyone in Townsite was doing to change the town’s generally negative attitude about the Townsite was going to be supported and celebrated, and the City got some eager volunteers.

As Andy’s health started to deteriorate and the Society was finding it more and more difficult to recruit contract minions to carry out the heavy lifting for him, he called upon his pals in the B.O.M.B. squad to blitz the mowing from time to time, but we were still working on a succession plan when he passed this spring.

Working with Townsite Ratepayers Association, Will van Delft and Townsite Ratepayers Society, Diana Collicutt, we’ve had one very productive community work party that whupped the back 40 into decent enough shape to be mowable. But it still needs ‘real’ gardening planning and labour and we (the Townsite Heritage Society) are so very open to nurturing partnerships with organizations and individuals who could ‘adopt’ chunks of the Triangle Gardens and be part of a sustainable succession plan.

Phone anytime, email anytime, tackle one of the Board if you catch them out in the open: you are very welcome to become part of the solution to preserve this community asset, because no one wants to throw away 30 years of volunteer investment in preservation and beautification, right?!