The rock garden. The garden paths are filled with rustic decor and items such as this bridge.
is bordered with collections of shooting stars, bellflowers, irises, sedums and primroses, and the stream edge bursts with ostrich ferns and marsh marigolds. Visitors often ask about the gazebo (Reader called it the
hut) and the many wooden benches found throughout the site. Heirloom sweet peas, recommended to early Calgarians by Reader and his contemporaries, are grown today on the hut as they were when the Reader family lived here. The designs, typical of the popular arts and crafts style of the time, are copied from Reader’s photographs of his own hut and benches. Handmade from saskatoon branches by local craftsman Fred Coates, each bench is an original. A bench sponsorship program supports the endowment fund that helps to ensure the future care of the garden. The garden today
Laughing children run along the stone pathways again.
Lovers take their wedding vows under the canopy of hundred-year-old trees. Rock hounds come to admire the collection of petrified wood and other unusual rock types. Avid gardeners bend down to examine the ever-changing display of alpine and other herbaceous perennials. Photogra- phers and painters find ample opportunity for their art. And hungry patrons wind their way up the stone steps towards the critically acclaimed restaurant that occupies the replica of Reader’s house in the centre of the property. May and June are the months to experience the garden’s
spring bulbs and alpine plants at their best. Reader was quick to recognize the potential of alpines to excel in the dry conditions of his sandy hillside home, so he tested species from as near as the Rocky Mountains and as far away as the mountains of Asia and eastern Europe. There are saxi- frages, primroses and gentians of many species, and even more plants with strange names like Aethionema, Edrianthus, Asperula, Minuartia and Cassiope.
Steps leading onto the Reader property. 28 • Fall 2016
localgardener.net
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