This property used to be the dwelling of William Roland Reader, Calgary's Park Superintendent from 1913 to 1942. 

He lived with his family of four in the superintendent's cottage at the top of the hill. When the Reader family moved in, the hillside was bare with very little vegetation, but that was about to change in a very big way. Over the next nearly 30 years, William Reader transformed this hillside into a garden oasis filled with plants (and rocks) from near and far. The gardens acted as a scientific test plot for what to grow in this harsh climate and an artistic expression of a master gardener. 

As you first enter the west garden, you must move around a large Mugo Pine. Reader believed this tree added a sense of mystery. 

If you take the path to the right, you will see a large stone where the path divides again. This is a piece of Alberta's provincial stone — Petrified Wood. This piece of petrified wood was from a sequoia tree that had its organic matter replaced over millions of years by mineral deposits. As you move up from the lower pond, you can see more petrified wood lining the left-hand path. 

Reader placed unique rocks throughout his gardens and was often given rocks as gifts from friends. These included blocks of sandstone and limestone from building sites. Tyndall limestone (quarried in Manitoba) can be found on the right-hand side of the lower pond. It has a characteristic mottled appearance, which is due to the difference between the cream-coloured limestone and the darker dolomite of fossil shrimp burrows. Several fossils can be found in this stone,  once the ocean floor 450 million years ago.

The lower pond provides a humid space for plants and mosses to grow. This is an excellent example of a microclimate that allows plants to survive that otherwise wouldn't - something Reader was incredibly good at creating.

You may have noticed that the gardens have many layers, curved lines, and natural features. This is the Arts and Crafts style popular at the time, created by Gertrude Jekyll, where you see large natural drifts in perennial beds and borders. This style was a juxtaposition to the very formal gardens of the Victorian Era, like those at Central Memorial Park. 

The bridge, gazebo, and benches you see are all created in this style. Handmade and natural, the original wooden infrastructure was joined without any nails or screws.

One of the challenges of maintaining and restoring the gardens is tree growth. Many of the trees Mr. Reader planted have grown quite large and thus shade more area. This upper pond is a good example: you might notice the Birch on the way up and the Balsam poplar to the right command a large amount of canopy space. This means the flowers and shrubs below must tolerate lower light levels. 

Another tree worth noting is the Colorado Blue Spruce on the corner of the lawn. This tree was planted in 1918, making it over 100 years old, and was considered an exotic species then.

This lawn was an early addition to the gardens as people in the Edwardian era enjoyed spending time outdoors for their health. The lawn was used for games and sports like tennis and croquet, as well as lunches and family events.

In his career as Parks Superintendent, Mr. Reader used this ethos of creating outdoor space for recreation and public health. He is credited with creating over 800 acres of park space and planting tens of thousands of trees so Calgarians of the day could enjoy the outdoors. What a fantastic legacy to leave today's Calgarians to enjoy!

This house is not the original superintendent's cottage but a replica. It was reconstructed in 2006-2007 based on the original house torn down in 1944.

Some things in the reconstructed house are a little different from the original: the dirt-floored root cellar is now a classroom space, the main floor is now a restaurant café, and the whole structure is a couple of inches over from where it used to sit.

William Reader was known to say that a house looked naked without vines growing on it and always had vines growing up on all sides.

Behind the house, there used to be a small garage for William's Model-T Ford, which he drove around to the different parks. There was also space for chickens, a cow, and a vegetable garden.

This area of the garden was also considered Reader's Wild Garden. Here, Reader grew tall plants, including his peony collection, and some native shrubs like dogwood, snowberry, and baneberry. 

The lower walkway was also known as the Fern Walk, as the hillside's shaded nature provides a good climate for growing moisture-loving ferns.

This upper garden was created for Martha Rose Reader, William's wife, who moved to Calgary with him and their two young children in 1908.

Martha Rose is remembered as the Lady of the Garden. She would suggest which colours worked well in the garden, as William was colour-blind. She worked hard managing the household duties and would use a cowbell when it was time to call William from the garden to come for breakfast before heading to work.

William created this rose garden to give her a quiet space to relax. It includes roses and other flowers not seen elsewhere in the gardens. Rose's grandchildren were not typically allowed in this space unless they were invited and behaved themselves. The grandchildren affectionately called this section Nana's garden.

This section is known as the High Rockery and is one of the first places William Reader planted flowers, including Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicaule). Here, you will see two large stumps belonging to two Picea pungens or spruce trees.

Typically, we don’t remove trees in the garden unless they are dying or dead because the canopy they create is part of maintaining the microclimates of the garden.

Some factors in making these choices include: Are they part of the historical shelterbelt? If this is the case, a new tree will be planted to replace the one removed. Is the tree old enough to be of Reader’s timeframe? This takes some guesswork, and we consult with Urban Forestry tree techs to determine the age of the tree; if deemed a Reader tree, we try to clone the tree via cuttings or collect seeds to try and produce offspring with the original tree DNA in it. This helps us stay as true to the history as possible in the garden.

For example, seeds from the white spruce shelterbelt you see on the roadway walking from the parking lot have been collected, germinated, and are now being grown. These trees will be planted as the shelterbelt spruce fails. They are not the exact trees, but the closest we can get. We use this method rather than buying new stock when we can.

When it comes down to it, safety is the main concern. The stump along the steps was a codominant leader — meaning two trunks — which made it relatively weak, so a strong wind could cause the tree to split in two. The upper stump’s roots also undermined the integrity of the stone pathway. This tree does not appear in Reader's meticulous records and likely germinated and grew on it many years ago, making its removal understandable.

Normally, the stumps are left in the garden as a reminder of the trees that once were. They also become homes to the voles and various insects and a food source for many mushroom species.

When William Reader retired in 1942 and, unfortunately, passed away in 1943, his gardens were opened to the public as a city park. Many people flocked to the space to view the amazing hidden gardens. However, the gardens' care declined, and many plants were removed.

Individuals during this time took plants under the guise of “rescuing” them as they didn’t want them to die. A visitor once shared that his father had taken some of the fern leaf peonies (Paeonia tenuifolia), which were slow-growing and, back then, a rare beauty. His father wondered if we would like some of the plants back, and we replied with an eager "yes." Unfortunately, many of these one-off visitor promises don’t materialize.

Not all of the stories end up like this, though. When the garden was being rehabilitated in 2004-2006, an amnesty 'no questions asked' call was issued across the city for people to bring back plants they knew were from the garden. Dozens of species were dropped back off! This was important as these were direct descendants of what Reader had in his garden. Most recently, a lady in Pincher Creek brought an Allium species back to the garden. She received it from her grandmother and knew it as Reader’s onion. This species is in the holding beds waiting to bloom to help identify it.

Some historic irises were returned to the garden after the rehabilitation, and the decision was made to allocate the bulk of the bearded iris group to one area. This ensured that these cultivars were not lost amongst the other plants and gave them the best chance for survival, as this location had the most sun in the garden.

This mass grouping usually is a no-no in the arts and crafts style. With partnerships with organizations like Can-West Iris Society and Historical Iris Preservation Society (HIPS), we are locating and procuring more named cultivars of Iris germanica and placing them in this area.

Recently, the garden participated in the Guardian Gardens program under the HIPS umbrella. This program aims to send historical irises across the world and in multiple countries and continents to ensure the cultivars and species do not go extinct. Records are to be kept and sent into the program, and once there are sufficient numbers of each type of iris, it can be deemed safe and not at risk.

We hope that through this program, some of the irises we need in the garden will be coming, and we can start sharing some of our collection and help save these beautiful flowers. A mapping project of these gems is underway and will help us inventory the successes and failures going forward.