Senior allowed to keep garden, for now

A senior’s plea for help encouraged Kamloops MLA Kevin Krueger to take up her cause to save her garden.

Fran Bailey, 77, was ordered to pull the 30-metre long garden behind the Glenfair Apartment downtown by April 12. The garden sits a metre uphill and B.C. Housing told her there are concerns the hill will erode and she will fall.

Krueger couldn’t fulfil her wishes to keep the garden when it is, but he arranged for a group of TRU horticulture students to move it to safer ground later this year.

In the meantime, the Ministry of Housing and Social Development has allowed Bailey to tend to her flowers, fruit trees and black currants from the road until the garden can be relocated.

The horticulture students will transplant the garden in the fall to an area in front of her apartment.

However, Bailey isn’t happy with the arrangement because she can’t reach any of her plants from the road and weeds are taking over.

“By fall, the plants will be so choked by the grass and the weeds there will be nothing to move.”

“Unless I have a 15 to 20-foot weed puller I cannot tend the garden or pick the fruit as it comes into season,” said Bailey.

She said the situation saddens her, but she has decided to give up her fight. She doesn’t want to cause a further stir and risk losing her home, she said.

“That’s the way it is,” said Bailey.

Ernest Phillips teaches horticulture at TRU and his students will move the garden later this year. He hoped to move the plants in the spring, but a warm winter meant for an early bloom, he said.

“Everything was already underway,” said Phillips.

He said it’s unfortunate the garden has to be moved, but Phillips is sure Bailey will enjoy the new one next year.

“When it gets there it will be more convenient,” he said. The garden will be planted according to Bailey’s instructions.

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