A Garden For All Seasons

Admiring a uniquely lovely—and patriotic—front yard

- Tonya Lambert

I first noticed Vera and Josef Pisa’s front yard three years ago while out taking a walk. Their yard was filled with a wide variety of evergreen trees. There were spruce, pine, junipers and larches in a variety of types, colours and shapes. A variety of plants including hostas, daisies, woolly thyme and others also flourished. An attractive decorative crane with its long, graceful neck peeked out from among the trees, and there was a stone birdbath fountain and several colourful ornamental balls. It was gorgeous. I was entranced.

For the next two years, every time I took a walk past this house, I stopped to admire the garden. Rain or shine, winter or summer, it was always pleasing to the eye. Then, one day, I had a chance to meet the owners and discovered how this amazing four-season garden came to be.

A NEW HOME

Vera and Josef arrived in Edmonton in 1982. More than a year earlier, the couple had fled the Communist regime in their native Czechoslovakia with their two young children, Josef (four) and Vera (three).

“Through Yugoslavia, we made it to West Germany, where we applied for political asylum,” explains Vera. “But we told them that we would like to continue to Canada. However, because we didn’t have any money, didn’t speak English and didn’t have any family in Canada, we applied to be sponsored by the Canadian government.”