Above left: the rockery by the house was the first garden Brenda made. Above right and bottom:
the front drive.
Left: a bench provides a peaceful lookout over the town.
Bottom left: the house that Ron and Brenda built.
two views of the cool and quiet perennial garden near
Left: this oriental contemplation bench overlooks the ravine where Brenda’s mom got lost and where the rail- road used to be situated.
an MLA, he served as president of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities for four years and he is still very involved in a variety of community and provin- cial issues. Manwhile, Brenda worked and helped
raise their two boys, Jamie and Devon. Pregnant with the first son, she began to garden in earnest. Within a few years, she had gained enough expertise to help Birtle win a national Communities in Bloom title twice, first in 1999 and then 2000. She later became active in creat- ing “Rural Gardens of Western Mani- toba”. Published as a booklet, it is now a website. For Brenda, learning to garden was
not just a matter of what to plant where. The rural gardener needs to be able to garden without the comfort of a city
32 WINTER 2013
water system because the property is not serviced with town water. Instead, Brenda has a large cistern and must care- fully husband this resource. Looking at her garden, you’d never guess this hand- icap existed. The garden has a timeless quality
about it; it seems to have sprung almost naturally from its perch above the town. It has a park-like, dreamy quality, peopled by the past but kept in balance by those living in the present. You can sit on a bench overlooking Birtle below and feel linked to both worlds. One of Brenda’s and Ron’s sons now has a house on the property a little lower down the hill, and grandchildren are learning the pathway through the trees to visit their grandparents. At the other end of the yard, past a
country garden filled with gay flow- ers and vegetables, a grassy path leads through the woods to a lookout over the ravine. It’s a place for thinking deep thoughts and has been equipped with an oriental bench to help the process. The place invokes a memory in Brenda. “My mother went for a walk in the ravine below,” she says, “and she got lost. But looking up, she could see the house, so she scrabbled up the hill, pulling herself up by clinging to shrubs. It was a very hot day.” Her mother was in her seven- ties at the time. Today, Brenda continues to garden
and dream of improvements. She has new inducements in the shape of her small grandchildren, for whom she plans to build memories that will give them an enduring foundation for the future. V
www.localgardener.net
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