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How
we got started on this 
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Louise Peacock. is a
custom garden consultant, horticulturist, speaker and webmaster based
in Mississauga, Canada. She is also the President/Founder of a
non-profit garden association called The
Gardening Network. (You can read more about the Gardening Network on
the home page) Louise and her husband moved to Mississauga in late 2003, to a house which is very close to Garnetwood Park. The Burnhamthorpe entrance to the park has a large flower bed which was always lavishly planted with colourful annuals - until 2005. Due to service levels adjustments and program changes, Mississauga Parks has now opted to change some of the annuals planting displays in its various parks, into perennial and shrub beds, as Louise found out when she called to find out why the Garnetwood bed looked unmaintained.Feeling that the location of this particular flowerbed heralds the entrance to Mississauga from Etobicoke, and that in its unadorned state, it was not very welcoming, Louise thought that the Gardening Network should offer some support. She contacted Mississauga Parks Department and spoke with Murray Glassford, Manager, North East District, and Jeffrey Cunningham, Supervisor, North East Parks Operations, to see if they would be interested in this type of involvement. She explained that since the Gardening Network had done exceptionally well in their 2005 annual fundraiser plant sale, that they would be pleased to donate some cash toward the purchase of some flowering plants for this particular bed. Murray and Jeff expressed great enthusiasm for the idea, and suggested taking it a step further: What if the Gardening Network was to "adopt" two sections of this large beds - the sections in front of each park sign - and plant the area themselves?  This shows the entire Garnetwood park flowerbed prior to changes to see changed bed - see Project PixTop of page |
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| To see the area, click on Project pix |
Louise thought that this was a great idea, and followed Murray and Jeff's request to submit a rough project plan. The plan showed theThe plan was approved by Murray Glassford, Jeff Cunningham, Sue Eglit and Jason Bertrand, the Garnetwood Park gardener, and formal liaison was set up between Jason Bertrand, and the Gardening Network. After a couple of discussions with Jason regarding preferred plants for that location, Louise approached local plant suppliers and GN members for plant donations in order to get Phase 1 underway.  Frank Santos from Tiveron's (the Apple Market) donated 11 one gallon pots of spring flowering, Black Widow Cranesbill, and Dave Carbone of Longos (at Rathburn and Ponytrail) donated 8 four-inch pots of groundcover Sedum, 6 one gallon pots of summer flowering Cranesbill, 4 one-gallon pots of "Vera Jameson" sedum, and 4 four-inch pots of Yarrows, and from Gardening Network member Norma Clark, 4 four-inch pots of Feverfew. Plant World gave four beautiful Russian Sage, 4 large yellow yarrow and 8 Wooly Tthyme. Later more donations would come in, and Jason would get some donations from other parks in Mississauga which had some excess plant material. You can check out the donors and the plant material by going to the Project Pix section. All of the donated material allowed the project to proceed on target and within the zero budget! Top of page |
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| To check out the project photos, click
here |
The project was started on June 29 (one of
the
hottest days we've
had to date ...) , with Louise undertaking to do this phase by herself,
since none of the other GN members were available.. The task was made more interesting by the fact that Louise had managed to crack four ribs while doing another job the day before. Phase 1 was deemed complete on June 30/05. Phase 2 was completed on July 18/05 with the assistance of volunteers Helen and Alex. Phase 2.5, which is the Parks section of the project, was completed during the months of August and September 2005.. Phase 3. was completed in September (with some amendments) on three separate days, one with Gardening Network volunteer and member, Clive Bowen and Louise who planted a batch of Creeping Phlox and few more perennial Geraniums, We deemed the prpject would be complete and ready to launch officially on September 30, 2005. We sent out the invitations, the press releases and the flyers and we lined up at 9:am, Friday September the 30th, 2005. Top of page We were really happy to have Councillor Maja Prentice with us, |
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| Project Launch Sept 30/05 |
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| box
91047, 666 Burnhamthorpe Road,
Etobicoke, Ontario M9C 2Z4 email: thegardeningnetwork |
