HOLDEN, Alta. – Margaret Gibson has learned to coax beauty out of her dry corner of the prairie.
Hidden behind a row of shelterbelt trees is an oasis of flowers and vegetables she sells at four local farmers’ markets.
Gibson is the first to admit it isn’t easy growing market garden flowers and vegetables where a wheat crop struggles.
“Growing things here is a challenge.”
When Gibson lived on a ranch in southern British Columbia, everything she tossed outside her window grew.
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“I liked it there. I’d take a peach pit and throw it in the ground and it would grow. Here you plant a tea rose and you have to protect it and then search for it in the spring to see if it survived.”
Despite the sometimes harsh conditions, Gibson has developed a talent for growing gladioli, the tall spiked plants with delicate blossoms up the stem.
“It’s a hobby with me. I get a challenge out of growing them.”
Using the local County of Beaver tree planter, it takes about a day for Gibson to plant her 15,000 gladiola bulbs each spring.
“People think I must have a quarter section when I tell them how many glads I have.”
She estimates she has about two acres of garden, including her house yard surrounded by flowers.
Planting the bulbs sideways and upside down staggers their growth and allows a longer flower season.
Each year she orders about 5,000 new bulbs to add more selection for her customers.
This year she ordered 1,000 of a mauve variety called Madonna, 1,000 of a pink with wine-colored centre called Wine and Roses, 1,000 carmine pink Applause, 1,000 light yellow Sunshine, and 1,000 of a mixture.
Her busiest day of the year was in mid-August at the Camrose Farmers’ Market, the day before the city’s cemetery decoration day. She sold 1,000 gladioli.
“I look at these like my kids. I make sure they get what they need.”
She said she misses most family get-togethers to look after her flowers.
“My family, they’re a little mad at me. If something comes up, I can’t go. You have to really like it.”
Scattered throughout the gladioli are tall sunflowers that have voluntarily grown in the garden. If they grow in a row where the glads have been planted, they get to stay.
Along with the flowers is the regular market garden produce including peas, beans, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, raspberries, cranberries and saskatoons.
Over the years, Gibson has realized her customers in Stettler, Viking, Tofield and Camrose like her mix of flowers and vegetables, jams and jellies.
If she has a few extra berries, she turns them into jam. If a glad bulb has an odd kink, she creates a bouquet using other flowers in the garden.
It’s not an easy way to make a living, she said, adding her children would like her to slow down.
“The whole summer is hectic. The family is really annoyed. They don’t like this pace,” said Gibson, tired from fighting a fire in the field. The baler had caught fire the day before and her husband Dave only had time to unhook the tractor. But the fire spread through the field before they could beat it out.
“We’re just dead. This past week has been unbelievable. I’ve got to ease up next year.”
But the season is only half finished and the best Gibson can hope for is a good night’s sleep.
Each day the flowers have to be watered and weeded, or the berries picked.
“If you can’t do a nice job and you have to keep walking past it, it gets on your nerves.”
In the recent hot weather they bought three-quarters of a metre of water from the neighbor’s dugout. There was enough water for her flowers, but not enough for their 50 head of cows or their horses during the winter. But it meant spending a day hooking up irrigation pipes.
Not willing to sell inferior produce, Gibson is often up early in the morning or awake late at night to ensure none of her produce is more than a few hours old.
“I still have to work like crazy till 11
o’clock each night.”
While Gibson always had a garden, it was not until her daughter was in a serious
accident that she quit her job as a recreation co-ordinator for a
seniors’ lodge in nearby Holden and expanded her garden.
It was a way of making income while still on the farm.
Once the flowers are finished, the tedious job of digging, drying, trimming and dusting the bulbs begins.
“This is not a thing I suggest everyone get into. You really have to like it. I’m from Holland. I’ve been playing with flowers since I was four or five.”
