There is no place I’d rather be.
Having grown up in rural Metchosin with overly industrious German parents, we cultivated our acreage with acres of vegetation and ornamental perennials laid out neatly in defined rock-walled gardens built by my father and tended to by my mother. Germans don’t do anything half measure, we raised chickens and even had a large aviary filled with pheasants, owls, geese and if you can imagine - a pet Canadian goose named ‘Lucky’ that slept in my bedroom.
I picked up some of my parent’s German accented words and still refer to a garden bed as a garden ‘bade’ :)
It was the the 80s and they were immigrants living their best life. My wonderful uncle Gordie Stach (my late father’s brother, John Stack was an anglicized version of his German name Johannes Stach) was the ‘Dahlia Champion’, his house filled with ribbons, his legacy hundreds of dahlia hybrids, my memory of his garden in Surrey packed with literally thousands of dahlias.
https://www.timescolonist.com/archive/dahlias-dazzle-and-delight-4599376
The houses I’ve lived in have always had a fussy garden reminiscent of the English Gardens I visited during my time living in the UK, elaborate perennial borders and fastidiously weeded lawns. Vegetable gardens with potatoes (obligatory for Germans) and truck loads of compost layering every year…I just love every season of it. I do NOT love the protected Garry Oak that hangs over my property (rooted in my neighbours yard). I remove over 60 bags of leaves a year. Bel-ief it.
People are often shocked that I chose Victoria over Manhattan when I married my husband Nicky, leaving our apartment in the Upper West Side for Esquimalt. They must have never lived in New York, and they must not have ever seen my garden ;) The heat radiating off of the cement during the summer months in Manhattan made me long for the cool sea breezes of Victoria, especially my home in Esquimalt, all near 9,000 sf of this manicured lot, south facing, verdant, my pride and joy.
The summer in my garden smells like the ocean (only a couple blocks away), sweet peas, and yes, sometimes it smells like Ribfest ha!
Some folks prefer maintenance free gardens and strata properties. Not me. Give me weekends of pruning and fussiness. Let me pour hundreds of hours into digging and weeding. Let my wrists ache and my knees have dirt embedded in them, I have zero shame running errands with soil all over my face, in my nose, in my ear. I choose to spend hours, days, weeks in the garden, but that time is never lost. It’s where I belong.
Our #ArtDecoEsquimalt is always filled with flowers, and the literal fruits of my labour have been giving back, we’re eating from the garden every night here and we’re growing : Apples, Figs, apricots, lettuce, spinach, kale, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, kiwis, lavender, tomatoes, peppers, squash squash, squash, beans, peas, potatoes, peppers!, onions, garlic, eggplant, currents, pumpkins, and every single perennial that I’ve proudly grown from seed, cottage biennials like mighty hollyhocks and snapdragons, lilies, daisies, anemones, ferns ferns ferns. There’s a hosta garden, a rose garden, an herb garden. A berry patch and room for more raised beds!
The next project is a greenhouse and some chickens of course! Head on over to instagram to see more pics of the garden, or better yet, drop by for a visit to see it in person :)
#esquimalt #esquimaltgardens #yyj #yyjgardens #victoriagardens #bcgardens #vancouverislandgardens #gardencity #cityofgardens #germanslovetogarden #gordonstach
