Best Urban Gardens In Calgary Near Me

4worldlovers: Reader Rock Garden Historic Park is one of Calgary's most unique cultural landscapes featuring the restored Reader house (that contains Reader's Garden Café), rock pathways, bridges, benches and beautiful flowers. Reader Rock Garden is the perfect location for group functions and events, including weddings, photography sessions and family gatherings. Book Reader Rock Garden for your function.

Reader Rock Garden Historic Park is one of the city's most unique cultural landscapes and the first Legacy Park to open. Its restoration was honoured with a Calgary Heritage Authority Lion Award in Landscape Preservation, earning official designation as a Provincial Historic Resource. Its restoration was completed in 2006 and earned an official designation as a Provincial Historic Resource. In 2018, the garden was designated as an official national historic site.

Reader Rock Garden has four beautiful locations for your wedding, picnic, meeting, family gathering or other outdoor event.

Reader Rock Garden is a designated provincial historic site. When visiting the garden, please respect the uniqueness of the plant collection, wildlife and facility by following these simple rules:

It is prohibited to disturb any part of the plant collection including seed collecting, fruit or flower picking or removal of any plants.

Stay on designated trails and grassy areas at all times. This helps to protect the plants.

Garden users must exercise caution at all times due to the sloped and uneven nature of the trails. Please wear appropriate footwear.

Due to the nature of the pathway system, groups must be broken into smaller sizes of 15 people maximum.

Animals in the garden are wild, do not disturb or feed them.

Adhering to the rules will ensure the protection of the Garden's valuable plant collection and historical features.

This historic garden created in 1913 is a tribute to one man's passion for plants and beauty. William Roland Reader was the Superintendent for Calgary Parks from 1913 – 1942 who transformed a bare hillside into an internationally-acclaimed garden.

Reader Rock Garden was historically used as accompanying gardens for the private residence of Calgary's Superintendent of Parks and Cemeteries. The house was constructed in 1912, and the garden's creation began one year later.

During the turn of the century, it was common for horticulturists to collect alpine plants on their travels and create gardens as living artifacts of their journeys. Reader actively engaged in this practice and for thirty years the Garden trialed over 4000 different plant species, making it one of the few significant gardens in western Canada.

Both Reader and his plant collection were known internationally, and the quality of the plants and seeds were recognized by the most prestigious horticultural agencies in the world. While the garden was essentially completed by the end of the 1920s, Reader continued collecting and experimenting with plant material until his death in 1943. One year later, the garden was named in his honour and opened to the public as a City park. Though the garden underwent periods of neglect and revival between 1950 and 1990, both they and the superintendent's cottage were restored and re-opened to the public in 2006.

Lovingly rehabilitated according to Reader's original plans, the garden blooms from mid-March to mid-November. The reconstructed Arts and Crafts style house features a café and classroom space for educational programs.​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Visit Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society for more information.

The west garden featured two constructed pools, a stream, a small bridge and a bog garden.

The high rockery was structured around stone pathways and retaining walls, and the flower beds were filled with numerous varieties of alpine plants, flowering perennials, shrubs and ornamental trees.

The garden by the house offered a small gazebo and was surrounded by perennial beds.

The south slope separated the house from the cemetery and contained an abundance of trees, shrubs and shade-loving perennials.

The western slope was the final section to be developed and was an extension of the high rockery.

Photos of William Reader and Reader Rock Garden courtesy of the Reader Family.

4worldlovers: The Wildwood Community Garden has been featured by The Best of Calgary

The Wildwood Community Garden exists to provide a welcoming space for the residents of Wildwood to garden together – to create a shared vision, to work collaboratively, and to cultivate a place for individuals, families and friends to learn about and to experience the rewards of gardening and community.

Our vision is to foster an environment of beauty and community, where people of all ages can share in the great contentment of gardening. We will follow the permaculture ethics of care of the earth, care of people, and fair share. It’s a place for learning healthy, sustainable ways of producing food and flowers in cooperation with others. This garden is an asset to the community.

We bring this vision to life by providing a community resource that allows neighbours to work together in growing flowers, herbs and produce in the community garden. In addition, we host gardening workshops, nature walks and the popular Harvest Festival.

For more information about the the garden, contact the Gardening Team at garden@mywildwood.ca or visit us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WildwoodCommunityGarden/

4worldlovers:
· Bin 3 (wood) – the bin on the north, closest to the tool shed

· Bin 3 is for ‘maturing’ compost – ready to use at fall cleanup

We are composting in batches. At or just before spring clean-up, anything in bin 1 is moved to bin 2.

At about the end of July or early August, the contents of bin 2 are moved to bin 3.

For Aerobic composting, which is what we do in the garden, the pile needs

Greens are high in nitrogen and include anything that was harvested when it was green or ripe/juicy.

Browns are high in carbon - harvested when dead, brown, and crispy.

Use a paper shredder rather than just ripping up paper and cardboard – the smaller bits compost much faster.

Avoid leaves from trees with clumps of seed like Manitoba maple – will cause a huge weed problem when the finished compost is spread.

Do NOT compost these items at home or in the garden. You will:

A simple rule of thumb is ‘equal amounts’. This, however, can be misleading. Our experience is that you have to think about the ‘equal amount’ – volume? or mass?

If the greens are light and fluffy you can add about an equal volume of browns BUT, a bag of fresh, wet grass clippings contains HIGHLY compressed grass and is MUCH heavier than a bag of brown leaves. An equal volume of browns is just not enough – aim for roughly equal weight.

Excessive greens make the pile very smelly – the cure is to add browns and aerate/turn like crazy.

· they are noxious weeds - (place in garbage bin in playground next to community garden or take home to your black garbage bin)

Http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/acts6156

Never compost any plant that you suspect is diseased as the bacteria, fungi or virus affecting the plant will not be killed.

It shouldn’t!!! Bad smells indicate problems. Most commonly these are:

· Alternate layers of greens and browns, maximum about 4 inches thick per layer. Then mix the layers together. Make sure that the 1:1 by mass ratio is maintained.

· Add a handful of soil after layering so that the pile has some micro-organisms to start the compost process. Once it starts heating up no need to add more.

As decomposition takes place, the pile will settle and squeeze out the air – killing the bacteria and fungi that make the compost (‘decomposers’). That is why it is important that aeration and turning gets done to introduce air spaces. Aerate (fluff that pillow! – mix, fold sides to centre) twice a week if you can.

CAN I BRING MY KITCHEN OR GARDEN WASTE TO THE BCGG BINS?

· The BCGG compost bins are used only for garden waste from the BCGG - PLUS coffee grounds (and ripped up used paper coffee filters which some volunteers bring from Starbucks)

· However, if you happen to munch a fruit or veggie while in the garden, you can put your

Eggshells don’t actually ‘compost’; rather the minerals in them break down and leach into the pile. It helps if they are crushed first. They add useful trace minerals to the mix but it takes a long time and chunks of shell may still be visible when the compost is sifted.

Bags marked ‘municipal compostable’ are only compostable in the City green box program.

· Don’t add these bags to either the garden compost or your home compost

4worldlovers: We have Calgary’s largest selection of indoor and outdoor pots!

Located on 20-acres in SW Calgary, we offer everything from tropicals, annuals, perennials, and trees & shrubs in our 15,000 sq ft greenhouse, to pottery, giftware and home décor from our 4,000 square foot retail showroom. Our experienced, expert team is also proud to offer full-service landscaping, pruning and fertilizing services to Calgary and the surrounding communities.

4worldlovers: To provide an organic garden to cultivate plants, build community and share our resources.


We will be widely recognized as a vibrant, welcoming, all-inclusive society. We will engage the community through gardening to create a sense of harmony, pride and ownership. We will be financially, organizationally and environmentally sustainable.

In order to fulfill these goals we maintain the Inglewood Community Garden as the means with which to engage the community. Each year we rent 121 individual garden beds and volunteers grow food for community service organizations in our 0.18 hectare (0.44 acre) communal garden.