Horticulture Operations
Traveling along any of our main streets and throughout many of our neighbourhoods your day will be enhanced when you see the many varied displays. Our horticulture staff works hard to create and maintain new and traditional floral combinations in hopes of having a positive influence on the citizens of Brantford and visitors to our beautiful city.
Parks employees begin planning and growing material for the next season in early September. We begin with cuttings for our carpet bed and Mosaiculture displays. We also begin to bring frost sensitive plants in that are used for cutting or are part of our collection.
Throughout the fall we are busy planting displays of mums and flowering kale as well as our spring flowering bulbs. The container plantings are removed and replaced with a winter display of evergreens and dried foliage. Our annual displays continue to be maintained until frost when they are removed and the beds are filled with manure.
During the winter month’s staff are busy growing the plant material required for the next season, the wide variety of material are started in various ways. They include seeding, cuttings and division. This is also when we do our planning for the next season displays. The previous displays are reviewed for successes and challenges and based on this the new plans are developed.
Horticulture staff are also busy developing and maintaining several indoor displays in various municipal buildings.
Spring is the most exciting and most demanding for all parks staff. We begin outside in April planting pansies throughout the City. Next in mid May we begin planting our annuals at over 60 locations consisting of over 200 beds and 160 planters. Throughout the summer these beds are maintained by our staff, which is made up of dedicated hard working students, seasonals and full time people. When September arrives we begin the process all over again.