If you’ve got a green thumb and/or a bit of time on your hands to put it to good use, Margaret Penner wants to hear from you.
The former Winkler Horticulture Society head is involved in community beautification these days by coordinating the city’s Adopt-a-Plot program, which sees volunteers take on the weeding and tidying of the various flower plots around town through the summer.
The program has been operating with great success for years, but saw about a dozen senior volunteers hang up their trowels this summer.
While Penner has found several new people eager to step into the vacant roles, there’s still very much a need for more.
“I have 19 or 20 people right now, and I could definitely use five or six more to round it out,” she said, noting they’d love to see more younger people get involved, as many of the long-running volunteers are getting up there in years and are hoping to pass on the baton.
“The lady that does this particular patch here is 82 years old,” Penner shared during a conversation at Parkview Gardens on Grandeur Ave. last week.
Volunteers are given a small section of garden to oversee and are asked to check in on it on a regular basis from now into August to pull out any weeds and report broken or dying plants.
The plots needing care are all over town—at Parkview Gardens, Winkler Park, the cemeteries, Greg Ens Memorial Park, and the Meridian Exhibition Centre, to name just a few.
It’s been a blessing to be able to find some new people for the crew this year, Penner noted.
“I really do think there is some providential leading in this sometimes,” she observed, sharing how a conversation she had at the MCC Thrift Shop with a newcomer from Belize translated into the lady getting involved with Adopt-a-Plot. “She was saying, ‘I wish I could volunteer somewhere … I don’t speak English that well, but we have a farming background’ … she and a friend took a section to do together.”
Another newcomer couple, this time from Ukraine, came with a background of working in a greenhouse and were eager to do something to give back to their adopted community. They are now overseeing the care of all the flower beds on the Winkler Arts and Culture Centre grounds.
“And she has a friend that is going to come and help too,” Penner said.
One of the program’s longtime volunteers is Ruth Ens, who has tended to a stretch of flowers in Parkview Gardens for about 25 years.
“I wanted to be part of the beautification of this area,” she said, noting she and her husband lived in a house adjacent to the gardens for decades before downsizing last year. Although they now call another neighbourhood home, volunteering with the Adopt-a-Plot program remains a great way for her to continue gardening (her new place doesn’t have a yard) while also giving back.
“It becomes not a job, but a joy. You come out here and you get to see the flowers, how they progress,” she shared, noting weeding in the initial few weeks after planting takes the most time, but after that it’s mainly a matter of staying on top of things. “As the flowers grow they fill in the spots and it’s mainly the edges you have to watch, so it’s not that much work.”
She estimates she spends well under an hour a week tending to her small plot. It’s time well spent, Ens stressed, and she’d recommend getting involved to anyone who is able to do so.
“It makes your day,” she said. “I would challenge people to take a turn at it. Or even when you come by on your walk, if you see a weed, pull it. We’re all working at this together. It’s not just a few individuals that are doing it—it’s all of us. Pick up a piece of garbage, pull a weed and you’ll feel so much better.”
The flower beds have all been planted and so volunteers are needed as soon as possible to cover the remaining unfilled plot assignments.
If you’re not gardening-savvy but are willing to learn which weeds need to be pulled, Penner would welcome your help. A lack of gardening tools also should not be a deterrent to someone wanting to get involved, she stressed, noting arrangements can be made in that situation.
“If they’re at all interested, contact me,” she urged.
Penner can be reached via a call or text to 1-204-362-2552 or an email sent to pennmd2@gmail.com.
