Gardening in Ukrainian Calgary

impressive horseradish - but not mine!

These sunny, hot Calgary days are forcing me to spend more time outside, which is wonderful, but it makes it impossible to overlook the overgrowth.  Time to look at improving our landscaping plan. The yard is great, but all the plantings from over the years are overgrown, or have lived their life cycle and need to go to the great compost heap in the sky (actually backyard). The spruce trees had a disease and stopped flourishing.  The mayday (I thought it was a chokecherry) lived a good life, it got cut down, as did the second one. Now the ornamental crab, though it had the most spectacular mauvy pink blossoms, and was the most beautiful tree in the neighborhood for a while, has aged and looks scruffy at best. The nicest large plantings on our yard are one huge Manitoba maple that gives shade to the front of the house, and its little sibling which will shade the front corner. So with a landscaping rethink, I decided to consider which traditional Ukrainian horticultural elements we would want to feature.

As I recall, every Ukrainian folk song or folk tale uses symbols from nature to underscore relationships. The way the boughs on a tree bend and bow, the order of flowers growing, the sunflower gracefully tipping its face upwards, the water rushing over the roots of a tree, everything has meaning. Silly, I know, but I have always wondered at the garden choices of my Baba, my Pra-Baba, and even my mama.

Pra-baba's garden was amazing, it even had a cold frame which she used to nurture little seedlings through tempermental springs on the prairies.  Beets, potatoes, cabbage, beans, peas - these I remember.  Sunflowers too!

I know that my grandmother insisted there should be schavel', wild sorrel on the yard. So she brought plants here to my home in Calgary from her cute little house, and amazingly huge garden in Manitoba. And raspberries, because she knew they are my absolute favorite fruit. And my uncle gave us horseradish to plant somewhere, and though it seemed right, the Baba-team warned it should only go into the alley-which it did, and promptly died. I have never heard of khrin dying, but in this Calgary back alley it did.

Now you know where there has been a good "hospodenia" gardener, when you see horseradish in the backyard that looks as impressive as this!!

Mama gave me mint and told me to plant it where it wouldn' t go completely berserk and take over the property. It gets used all summer long in cooking recipes like chortopita (the wild-greens version of spanakopita that my family loves). I also dry the leaves several times a season, when it gets overgrown, for sipping on mint tea all winter long. Just loved it when my mama would send up bags of the dried green stuff, my kids would just laugh when mama was getting her new "stash"!

chamomile

Then somehow some little chamomile plants hitch hiked here in a pot of other things.  It sows itself, and when there is enough I collect and dry the flowers for chamomile tea, really!!

My husband planted hollyhocks because he remembered seeing them grow in Baba's yard. Mal'vi, as they are called in Ukrainian, are puffy like mallows, and a pretty pink, but with the windy weather in Calgary they tend to fall over. The gladioli did too! So I have delphinium. But what are they called in Ukrainian?

periwinkle - barvinok

Then there is the poppy!  With all the famous recipes calling on ground poppy seed, kutia, poppyseed chiffon cake and poppyseed tortes - but Canadian law says it is illegal.  darn!  So I have to restrain myself to the other traditional flowers used in a Ukrainian garden all seem to be popular plantings here on the prairies!   Marigold, peony, bluebells (campanula carpatica!), chamomile, periwinkle (barvinok), and iris, which, wouldn't you just know it, most of which grow in the garden already!!  Maybe I am on track already??

Ukrainian Orchard Plans for Calgary?

actinidia kolomicta growing in my front yard

So when my husband and I were in Ukraine a while back and visited the family dacha outside of Kiev, we admired their cherries, apricots, plums, oh, so many beautiful fruits! Then sitting under the shady grape vine covered car port for lunch and catching up with family, we also couldn't help but notice the half white and half green leaves of a special vine crawling up the side of the two story cottage. My husband's attention was grabbed by the pretty vines which, family explained, were actually kiwi. The pretty vines, vigorous climbers, are called actinidia kolomikta. Here in Calgary he found them at the garden center.  Turns out they are creating quite a sensation in gardening circles, as the hybrid is actually referred to as arctic kiwi for their relative hardiness. They have glossy dark green leaves, which go yellow in the fall.  They have little white flowers in springtime and delicate, thin skinned fruits that are delicious.   Planting them in a sunny location up front seemed logical, but when they struggled, we bought more, and noticed from the tag that they love sun and part shade. So we have some more in the back garden, nestled against the shady wall, and they are growing quite reasonably. The year before last we even had a few handfuls of the fruit. The hail that fell last summer (was it four or five times!) really prevented any little fruits from growing, much less ripening on the vine. But when they do get protected from the ravages of Calgary hail and frost, the fruit is small, like a long green grape in size.  The fruit is delicate, soft skinned, and the sweet taste is exactly like ripened kiwis you buy in the stores, imported from some tropical land far away!

Did you know that way back in the first immigration from Ukraine there were people who had come with full intentions of having fruit orchards here? Well I know this because when I went to Peter Svarych School in Vegreville a long time back, I discovered he was among the most interesting company when he immigrated. Ambitious just isn't the word.  Came here in 1900 to help family, then as a labourer, then opened a lumberyard and building materials shop.  Was a game warden.  Eventually became a school trustee with a school named after him.  What was his background?

It just so happens that the people in western Ukraine have a great climate for apple trees, cherry trees, you name it! And, transplanting their lives here, over a century ago those eager homesteaders brought the idea of orchard farms to life in the Vegreville area (maybe it was Royal Park?). Everything from raspberries, to chokecherries, gooseberries, apples, pears, plums, nanking cherries, strawberries, saskatoon berries have become part of our prairies orchard vernacular.  With a shelter of fast going pine, spruce, and poplar, they ambitiously planted fruit trees which actually bore fruit in the short term. The remnants of that era are at the experimental farms out there (are they still there?)  Imagine taking virgin prairie land, and nurturing lush, market garden orchards way back then?

When my grandparents were still on the farm, my Dido, dad and uncles planted an orchard on the family farm north of Edmonton. Harvesting apples, cherries, plums and (I think) gooseberries, combined with the fact my Dido had an apiary (he kept bees) (it always makes me smile to say that, because you can't own bees!) my family tried to emulate this centuries-old Ukrainian orchard tradition. For many years the cartoon image of Mama and Tato sitting in rocking chairs, shooting nuisance prairie gophers with slingshots would cause spontaneous laughter! It never did happen, although the gophers probably would have backed off a bit had the folks at least tried, but then time flies!

Here in Calgary some years ago I visited with Mrs. Meketiak, then a centenarian who shared some of her heritage garden flowers from her home near SAIT- I think they were snow drops.  And Mrs. Swityk, who also lived not far away also gave me garden clippings - she had a huge lemon tree growing in her front porch!!  I always recall driving past and seeing their gardens just bursting with joyful color and abandon.  How did they get so good at it?  Well, we haven't been here long enough for those kind of bragging rights. 

Here at our home in Calgary, in the shadow of Nose Hill, we have a lovely apple tree which will probably bear 2,000 apples this year. It will be apple pie season again! Apple raspberry, apple rhubarb, apple-kiwi? Maybe not this year, but there is always hope.
I wonder whether kalyna - the high bush cranberry would grow somewhere on my yard??