It’s been thirty two years since I've been in Winnipeg’s English Garden. I sit on a shaded bench. The old garden stirs in my mind images of ancient gardens; the Garden of Eden in an exotic 1500 era painting, beautiful, orderly, calm, flush with water, resplendent with exotic mountains, verdant meadows, and mythic and fantastic fauna , all from the imagination of Hieronymus Bosch.

The dark garden of Lucy Dickens’ Gethsemane – His Will with its gnarled ancient trees and stream of light illuminating a lightly trodden path but focussed on the acceptance, the bowed head of Jesus.  The Garden of the Resurrection painting I found on sanctafactory.com dominated by the figures of Jesus and Mary, with grass replete with tiny flowers, lilies blooming against the rolled away stone and the trunks of two trees framing the scene.  I hum the song “I walk in the garden alone while the dew is still on to the roses” and ponder.

Suddenly I want to ask the girl tending the Impatiens “how does your garden grow?” And my mind slips to the 1950's. There my great grandfather with only one arm (the missing limb was eaten by a threshing machine) carefully tends his tomatoes, sweet peas, pansies, and fruit trees in Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan. And then I walk with my mother inspecting my grandmother's garden at St Pete's Colony, a regular family ritual entertainment after dinner. 

Finally at the farm I sit hidden by the tall corn stalks eating peas in my mother’s massive garden– the pumpkin, melon, cucumber vines stretching beyond the garden limits– enjoying the orderly columns of potatoes, lettuce, peas, carrots, amidst stands of cornflowers, poppies, Maltese cross, Cosmos, and the hundreds of gladiola!  — a far cry from the community garden I saw this morning a half block from the Jesuit residence on Young Street with its wooden board sporting notes and messages and its few rows of plants.

Two young girls taking a picture of a hummingbird make me conscious of the scene right before me: The English Garden in Assiniboine Park, Winnipeg, Manitoba, an English flower garden.

There is the bust of Queen Victoria perched on her pedestal.  Apparently she reigned outside the Old City Hall, as part of a fountain celebrating her golden Jubilee in 1897.  Perhaps her removal in 1953 to the north end of the English Garden accounts for her ‘not amused’ look.  

At the entrance of the garden “Deedle, deedle, dumpling, my son John”, the bronze boy, holding up his leaking right boot, frozen in time, a bemused visage and a left hand in the pocket of his drenched trousers stance, has been welcoming guests to the garden since 1913. 

The garden beckons, the flowers are profuse, the ambiance is warm, the paths are many, and the resting spots are convenient.  Garden staff work quietly, ready to share intimate details of their charges. It is not just an English Garden.  It is my garden, a place to stroll, to think, or just to be. It was a special garden to me over thirty years ago.  It still is today. 

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Unless otherwise noted, all photos are courtesy of Frank Obrigewitsch, SJ.