Comments and Ideas From Our Visitors

• Restaurant with gnome theme for kids (10-year-old Clive)
• Renaissance Fair
• Decorate the Christmas trees
• Zip line
• Suspension Bridge
• Canopy Walk
• Long banquet table in a field
• House: push the kitchen out the back into the garden to make a catering kitchen
• View corridors
• Bird walks
• Invite wedding photographer to do a mock up portfolio by “wedding avenue”
• Grow gourds from the hoops, use for birdhouse workshop for kids
• Put up a watch tower to view garden

• Dog training area
• By NW corner, in sunny area – plant sunflowers & have a VanGogh café
• Jurassic Park area by gulley
• Add spring blossoming trees
• Little Sparta stone sculpture
• Magic garden, magic forest – Sword in the Stone, Mists of Avalon etc.
• Invite prominent Vancouver landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander to visit
• Winnie the Pooh areas
• Microbrewery & grow hops
• Grow large things for florists – eg big twigs, big holly, berries, hops
• Episodic events – always something new going on
• Exchange membership for volunteer hours
• Mow different routes each year – adding different features such as a mass of cosmos or sunflowers
• Use meadows as setting for Videos, eg string quartets or rock videos
• Use site for movies

• Mow around the trees and put down chips
• Ask a tree service to loan us a chipper from time to time or deliver their chips to us
• Remove all the tiny trees (under 6 feet)
• Remove the broom and blackberries (we’ve started this)
• Fill the holes
• Put a potager in the old Llama pen using local horse manure (ask at Turf Farm)
• Ask owner of Turf Farm about the water & ponds
• Invite old Mr. Murray onto the property possibly to help understand the irrigation and the history of the property (done.)
• Have a cocktail party for press & others – tent in garden,
  wine from a winery, Sweet Chef or other local chef

• Have an idea box
• Have a Guest Book (we do)
• Have a big sign with drawings of our plans on site.
• Have an ashtray and a no smoking sign
• Have a U-cut Christmas tree sale using a colour code for the prices
• Children’s garden
• Veggie garden – very important
• Use the A-frame as an admin building
• Use house for a café and gift shop
• Use the open shed by the gate as a sales area
  for large garden items & plants
• Have art/painting classes
• Have artists tours

• Powdery surface on the bark of the aspens is a natural sunblock!
• Have concerts
• Ask the golf courses to donate their old but workable golf carts
• Drill a well
• Invite the mycological society for mushroom walks
• Have a garden green waste drop-off depot for a fee as a fund-raiser
• Suspension bridge over Wakefield Creek
• Wheelchair accessible
• Leave an area in natural meadow state
• Love the look of mown pathways
• Butterfly garden: partner with a primary class at the elementary school.
  Either K or Gr 1 class could raise Painted Lady butterflies and release them in the Garden
• Frog Pond: let a primary grade teacher collect eggs from the pond, hatch in an aquarium
  in the classroom, and have the children return with the
  tadpoles to release back into pond. Connects to Earth Day
  and/or Science Unit on amphibians and pond environments

• Use rain barrels to collect run off from roofs and use water for watering pots
• Definitely have a vegetable garden…make this a prominent feature
• Japanese garden in NW corner (by hoop house). Use the pond as a ‘borrowed edge’
• House needs to be public space, such as teahouse, café, giftshop
• Use shed space beside house as public washroom area
• Volunteer quarters and office space should be in A frame
• Christmas tree sell off as fundraiser (remove every third or fourth tree)
• Fall colour tour by donation
• Get rid of all the small, damaged conifers – anything under 6’
• Fill in the holes!!! Then mow all areas that you want accessible.

• Clear out broom and blackberries.
• Have weekend work parties
• Call someone at a Scrapyard to take the washers/dryers for free.(done.)
• Get someone with a chipper
• Mason Road Vineyard!! Get the wine society involved
• Pathways – have shorter route for seniors, also a medium-long route and a long route
• Golf carts for people who have difficulty walking – ask the Golf courses to donate used ones
• Put in a gazebo at the end of the double line of trees
• Rhododendron walk – and azaleas
• Beehives
• Veggie garden

• Children’s garden
• Community garden plots
• “Robin’s Teahouse & Gift Emporium”
• fundraiser idea – make a gourmet meal and charge people for it.
• Open pavilion, like Rockwood, with open sides
• Get the word out through real estate agents – new people with money buying big homes – pamphlets in real estate offices
• Make a documented photo shoot of the “Before” garden as it is now
• Drainage ditches running to the creek – do they need to be upgraded?
• Cap College hort training (great opportunity for students)
• “Whistlers” might be interested in the materials.
• Check out the San Diego Botanical Garden - volunteer run and owned.

• Use GPS to map the trees and create a database.
• Hire a university student on a grant.
• Make a path into the gulley to the creek
• Aviary, butterfly house in the hoop house
• Petting farm
• Creek/river rafting
• Hallowe’en scenes
• Master gardener classes
• Cafeteria & gift shop
• Ponds & water gardens
• Christmas tree sales with hot chocolate & gift items
• Avenue of maples to develop
• Picnic areas
• Community compost
• Meditation area – hold retreats
• Pender Harbour Garden Club have a work party in place of a meeting
• A great project!

• Shire horses and hay rides
• Please walk on the grass” sign
• Restoration of the cottage – Cap. University building maintenance program
• Find an apple expert – Mike Poole
• Spring bulbs by the pond
• Ask Ed Steeves about tractors
• Christmas carols in the garden
• Suspension bridge
• Ground level tree house for children under the skirt of a tree
• Mushroom identification area
• Graze sheep – ask spinners & weavers
• Get a chipper
• Horses & hayrides
• Encourage wild mushrooms
• Use cement pad for a new building
• Ask high school shop class to renovate or build

• Veggie garden
• Christmas tree sales
• Move annual plant sale to this site
• Sell surplus shrubs
• Elegant dinner in the hoop house – cover it in gauze
• Frog watch – link with Halfmoon Bay school – tree frogs – Annette Clarke
• Bird Walks with Tony Greenfield or Rand Rudland
• Contact Canada World Youth for workers
• String hammocks along one whole row of trees
• Brick wall around the potager/vegetable garden
• Arboretum section
• Natural area by stream
• Preserve awesome crabapple tree
• Develop a database with plant list, where it came from, location, attitude, wild/cultivated,
  date planted, when/where moved, if it dies-why, use Excel to start with.
• Use GPS to map the trees and existing plants
• Feast of Fields
• Flowerbeds

• Bard on the Beds – Shakepeare
• Edible wilds
• Birdsong CD
• Medicinal plants
• Horticultural therapy program
• Pumpkin patch
• Clear out alders
• Remove crowded trees
• Secure funding for on-going maintenance
• Have a section to show forest succession with the alders fostering the cedar, hemlock and Douglas fir seedlings
• Check out land to the west for old tree



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• Frogs are often seen near the ponds. Can you identify this one?
  
  Click here for the Answer