BARRHEAD - It was a long time coming.
On Saturday, Sept. 23, dozens of people joined the Barrhead Garden Society to celebrate the grand opening of its new location at the end of 47th Avenue behind the Pembina West Co-op grocery store.
The celebration included speeches from dignitaries, tours of the garden plots and a free barbeque dinner.
The celebration also put an official end to about four years of uncertainty. The garden was at its previous site, a five-acre plot of Town of Barrhead-owned land on the west side of town, just north of the apartment buildings on 53rd Street, since 2013.
The town initially purchased the land and an adjacent parcel (about nine acres worth) to build a new aquatics centre.
But when the municipality decided to build the new swimming pool on the old site, the town started focusing on developing the property commercially.
The garden's future was put in flux in 2018 when the municipality engaged the efforts of a commercial real estate firm and gave the society a year to relocate. After receiving little interest from potential buyers, the town extended the relocation deadline for another year.
However, when the municipality sold the three-acre parcel that the garden is on in 2021, their new landlord said they had to move out by Oct. 31, 2022.
County of Barrhead reeve Doug Drozd said he was pleased that the garden had the security they had long sought for calling the garden a vital community.
"Most Albertans only have a faint recollection of their grandparents growing a garden," he said. "So it is good to learn gardening techniques, learn the skills needed to grow your own food and pass them down from generation to generation, to learn to be self-sufficient, and feel a connection to the land and the community."
He also joked that half expected to see Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other players banned from professional baseball in the infamous 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal out of the adjacent cornfield, referring to the movie Field of Dreams, a dramatized theatrical version of W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe Jackson.
"Kinsella actually grew up near here," he said.
Kinsella was raised in Darwell before his parents moved to Edmonton when he was about 10 years old.
Town of Barrhead Coun. Dausen Kluin also echoed Drozd's sentiments, saying the community garden and the education about knowing where one's food comes from was an important step in food security.
Society president Sue Rees agreed, saying the community garden plans to host courses on many food growing and preparation sessions, from properly prepare a garden site to canning and teaching novices in the kitchen how to prepare nutritious meals at home.
She, along with Community Garden treasurer and manager Marilyn Flock, also told the audience that these programs and future expansion plans, which include the addition of a gazebo and a performance stage, would not have been possible without the help of both the Barrhead Rural Mental Health Network and Pembina West Co-op which helped them secure over $100,000 in combined grants. The Mental Health Network helped the society receive $20,000, while Pembina West Co-op helped them secure an $88,000 Community Spaces grant from Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL).
Co-op marketing manager Brittany Schuurman noted in her speech that Barrhead's community garden received the most grant funding of any FCL project in western Canada in 2023.
Of course, they added all of their efforts and that of dozens of volunteers and community businesses would have gone for nought, they said, if it had not been for the generosity of the land's owners Oscar Daase and Edwin Winkler, which have given the society a long-term, minimal cost lease.
"Without them, who knows if we would even have a garden right now," Flock said.
