Valley Gardeners forced to abandon beloved plot

BY JENNIFER HOEGG

jhoegg@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

In the middle of a busy regional hospital, a green oasis exists where people can escape the stress of work, illness and death.

Members of the Valley Gardeners Club created and nurtured the Courtyard Garden for 17 years. Plants were donated, expert advice sought, manure procured and spread, furniture built by hand. One of the gardeners even trimmed the grass with a manual mower so as not to disturb patients.

However, members voted in July to walk away from the Valley Regional Hospital site. The courtyard garden will no longer be tended, planted, weeded, mowed or fertilized by the group because of a dispute with the hospital’s administration.

The Valley Gardeners are upset by the Kentville hospital’s decision to place prominent memorials - a concrete plinth and two concrete benches - in the beautiful nook.

The memorials, one of which dedicates the courtyard garden to a donor’s daughter, offend the principles of the garden, Courtyard Garden Committee chair Dr. Charles Hope said in an interview. “This is a place for visitors, patients and staff who need a moment of respite, a moment to not be faced with (mortality.)”

Members have been in discussions with the hospital, including representatives of the hospital foundation and the regional health authority, since the memorials were introduced last fall.

After months of “non-productive” discussion with hospital authorities, the club issued a statement in late July announcing it would cease “stewardship of the garden until a garden of peace and tranquility for the living is restored by the removal of the memorials for the dead to a more suitable location, perhaps another garden dedicated to that purpose.”

A soothing space for the living

Gardener Murray Colbo found the monuments in October. “I went in to tend the garden to see what might need tidying up, do a little pruning of things,” he said. “I was taken aback, to say the least, when I found this large memorial situated within the garden. “Personally, I found it disturbing,” he added. “It reminded me of a cemetery; they are also called memorial gardens.”

Colbo said he does not think the hospital realizes the connotations “memorial garden” might have, but he said it mars the garden’s aim; to “celebrate the more beautiful aspects of humanity” with living things.

The emotional benefits of the garden are well known to Colbo. Shortly after he and his wife moved to Coldbrook in 2007 she was diagnosed with aggressive, terminal cancer. During her illness, the couple spent many hours in the courtyard. “I have fond memories of both of us being able to go out in the garden, admiring plants. I have always found gardens very peaceful. They give one a bit of a boost of how nice life really is,” he said.

The Colbos found the courtyard garden “a very therapeutic place where you could contemplate the beauty of a life rather than confronting the realities of your mortality.”

After his wife passed away last year, Colbo found out the Valley Gardeners Club stewarded the courtyard space and decided to join in its efforts.

Long history of time, money and dedication

Colbo is one of dozens of club members who have contributed to the space over the years. In fact, every year since the hospital opened in 1992 Valley Gardeners have donated their own time and money and procured donations of supplies to beautify the courtyard.

The relationship began as a “philanthropic and beautification” effort by the club, Charles Hope said. “When the hospital was being built with a courtyard with just some grass and a cement walkway, the garden club decided this would be a good thing to offer.”

In partnership with the hospital authority of the time and a contribution from the hospital board of $2,000 the club set to work, agreeing to create and care for the garden for “the next few years.”

Seventeen years of loving care followed. In 2008 alone, the club brought in two truckloads of manure, two of bark mulch and six bags of lime, all hand-shoveled by members. Expenses, not including donations, for that gardening season were over $500. A member of Kingstec’s staff, in addition to free advice, “personally provided 33 heath and heathers at no cost,” a donation Dr. Hope estimates at being worth well over $300.

Forty-one visits were made to the garden last season by club members using their own tools. Some would even stop to weed the building’s front garden.

Multiply that sort of effort over 17 years and one can understand how hard it will be for members to walk away from the plot.

No argument with donors “There is a lot of hurt among some (members,)” Charles Hopes said, but they have no argument with the generous individuals who paid for the monuments or for the people to whom they are dedicated. “The point is not who the monument is for, but the fact it is a memorial,” Hope’s wife and fellow gardener Anne added. “I quite understand that the hospital was trying to acknowledge a contribution toward the hospital and its facilities that would be beneficial to all of us,” Colbo noted. “I appreciate this. But if they want to have that sort of monument thing they should have it in a donor’s memorial garden where it’s quite clear what it is. “I have no objection to that and I admire people who contribute to the hospital,” he emphasized, adding he would be happy to help the hospital create another garden for memorial donations.

A matter of respect

Anne Hope said one of the most upsetting parts of the introduction of the monuments is the hospital’s action that suggested, “the garden club was not worth consulting. “We are volunteers, donors and stakeholders,” she added. “If we let this go the hospital’s attitude toward its volunteers will be reinforced. This is not the way volunteers should be treated.”

Anne Hope conceded the hospital has a right to use its assets as it deems appropriate, but “how they use their assets has repercussions.”

AVH response

In response to the club’s decision, the Annapolis Valley District Health Authority spokesperson Tamara Gilley issued a brief statement thanking the group for providing and maintaining the garden, adding, “it is unfortunate that the Valley Gardeners Club has chosen to withdraw their services, but the district respects their decision.”

Members are not surprised by the authority’s response, Colbo said, but they are still hopeful a resolution can be found so members could, in good faith, continue their work with the hospital. “The door is open,” Charles Hope concluded.