Steps leading up from the pation to the garden.


Right: Brenda Evans Cool shade under the deck at a ground level patio.


Bottom right: a view of the park from Brenda’s deck. Her rockery is at right in the photo.


here in this wonderful, storybook place in which to grow up. Brenda, a city girl, had come to Birtle to take up a one-year teaching position. “I thought it would be interesting to spend some time in a small town,” she says. Then she fell in love and married a local boy. Even so, she always expected to return to Winnipeg but when the chance came, she discov- ered how much she missed the peace and beauty of her adopted home. Love is a magic vine that can wind around hearts, sometimes without our knowing it, and, in spite of herself, Brenda had adopted Birtle as the home of her heart. She has spent her entire life there now, building a career as a reading specialist working with special needs kids. Brenda and Ron built


their house


after purchasing the land and, two years later, Brenda began to garden. Garden- ing was not something she had ever even thought about before, although she


www.localgardener.net


later learned that her grandfather was a gardener of note. For Brenda, creat- ing her garden was not a casual affair. She took to the task with studied care after beginning with a small effort in a rocky area just outside the house, This rockery remains one of her favourite garden spaces. But she had a large area to work with


and so she sought out advice from local gardeners, including friend Hugh Skin- ner. She read and studied gardening books, approaching the development of her space in a step-by-step logical fashion. She even went to England and borrowed sensibilities from gardens there, especially how to blend formal areas into wild ones. As for Ron, he carried on the prop-


erty’s tradition and became first a councillor in 1989, and then mayor of Birtle, a position he held from 1995 until 2010. While he didn’t aspire to be


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