OHS Project at 126 Flora Street, Summer 2008

2008 Community Planting Project

This year's project was 126 Flora Street in central Ottawa. The residence at this address is one of five run by Daybreak Non-Profit Housing. Daybreak is a charitable organization that provides affordable "supportive" homes for low-income single adults.

Daybreak wants their buildings to be fully as attractive as the other houses in the neighbourhood. To that end, the OHS undertook to transform the front yard of 126 Flora, and to create a quiet outdoor retreat in the back yard.

Committee: Jennifer Mix (chair)
Laurie Graham, Kendra Hunter, Margaret Scratch, Jean Stalker.

Also helping were some of the residents of 126 Flora, as well as numerous OHS members.

Laurie Graham and Jean Stalker took the photographs shown here.

Community Planting Committee 2008 Summer Project:

The Gardens at 126 Flora Street

In May of 2007, one of the members of the Community Planting Committee, Jean Stalker, suggested a planting project for that summer. She was familiar with the work of Daybreak Non-profit Housing, an ecumenical charitable organization that runs five sheltered residences in Ottawa for people transitioning from various institutions or from drug- or alcohol rehabilitation programs into community life. It also serves low-income single adults in need of shelter.

For its three-storey home on Flora Street, Daybreak wanted to provide a quiet outdoor retreat for the male residents and to upgrade the appearance of the home to better fit in to this rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood. Jean and Jennifer Mix met the director that summer, and after some discussion the committee agreed that this would be a great project for the OHS to undertake. Unfortunately, the Plant Recreation Centre project continued much longer than anticipated that summer and we decided to tackle the Flora Street project in 2008 instead.

Successful as it was, the Plant project, with its regular schedule of Saturday morning work bees, was an onerous project. Over the summer of 2007, attendance at those bees fell to a few die-hards who were willing to brave heat and drought to come and water, weed, deadhead, shovel gravel, soil, and mulch for the greater glory of the new gardens. So we chose to try a different tack for the Flora Street project.

We decided to complete the project through a limited number of work parties in June. We reckoned that three sessions would do it, but that necessitated the careful planning and timely ordering of construction materials and tools for each weekend. We advertised the project to our membership and to our great delight, many OHS members turned up over those three Saturdays to lend a hand.

Because this garden needed to be very low maintenance, we planned to tear out the grass from the front yard and build a semi-circular, stone-walled, raised bed containing evergreens of different heights, hues, and shapes to provide visual interest in front of the wide veranda. We would then cover the lower portion of the front garden with decorative river stone. Daybreak was to pay to have the asphalt front walk torn up and replaced with brick of a similar hue to the stones in the new retaining wall. In the narrow remainder of the front yard, beside the walkway, we chose to plant a series of the Lorrain/Lycett Canadian-bred daylilies and a tall, columnar cedar. The whole area was to be heavily mulched, in keeping with a lowmaintenance garden. In the back, our plan called for a new, long, curved perennial bed stretching across the foot of the garden, anchored by a large, blue, columnar juniper and decorative shrubs and further planted with some shade and some sun-loving perennials, and then mulched. A Japanese lilac was to be planted in the backyard, as the front streetscape already contained a large number of these trees.

All this we aimed to accomplish in three days! Well, we did it! Those three days were long but with so many willing hands, the work progressed at an amazing pace. Those hands and backs moved tons of earth, gravel, river stone and wall stone; measured carefully; critically eyed each wall stone as it went into place before gluing (!); and planted each tree, shrub, and plant with care and exactly in its place. After having worked in our own established gardens for so long, many of us rediscovered the joys of creating a garden from scratch. We marvelled at the sum of all our various degrees of garden or construction savvy that sped us on our way to the end of the project. We also discovered the delights of Ada’s Diner for lunch (corner of Bank and Arlington). As we worked, neighbours stopped by to express their pleasure at the changes. Several of the home’s residents contributed hours of hard labour alongside OHS members. The project was completed at the end of June and happily for all, little extra watering was needed for the rest of the summer. We expect to see growth and softening of the lines of the front garden next summer, and a much fuller garden in the back yard. If you are in the neighbourhood, cruise by 126 Flora and have a look at what your contributions to plant sales and auctions have accomplished.

We would like to thank all those who contributed their sweat equity to this project. Hoping we have forgotten no one, we thank the following: Jeff Blackadar; Sheila Burvill; Laurie Graham; Kendra Hunter; Eric Jones; Line Lessard-Lynch and friend Roger; Deborah McPhedran; Jan Pollard; Margaret Scratch; Jean Stalker; Sylvia and Bob Spasoff; Penny Thompson; and Robert and Jim, house residents.