Passion for gardening brings award

RM OF NORTH CYPRESS-LANGFORD — A husband and wife won an award for their Westman garden which has become a community project allowing spontaneous visitors, weddings and field trips.

The Manitoba Good Roads Association awarded its WSP Shield to Glenda and Joseph MacPhee, who operate Gardenview Farm, last month. The award recognized the property as The Best Farm Home Ground-North Western Region in the northwestern region for 2025.

Dozens of residents, the Town of Neepawa, and the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford celebrated the couple’s award in late April, with the RM describing the garden as a community highlight.

“Their beautiful yard is a true point of pride in our municipality, and this recognition is so well deserved,” says a statement posted on the rural municipality website. “Thank you for helping make our community such a wonderful place.”

The beautification award comes years after the property established itself as a feature of the community, with Glenda and Joseph inviting people to visit the landscape at their country home. Community members have accepted that opportunity for everything, from casual visits to a Shakespeare play over the past 10 years.

According to a philosophy professor, it makes sense that the garden attracts people because gardens remind humans of a place that nurtures and sustains human life.

With the season ramping up, the couple is preparing to kick into gear.

The garden is located on the private property of the MacPhees, roughly two miles outside Neepawa on the shoreline of Lake Irwin. The space includes a field of flowers, sitting benches, a barn, a greenhouse, a visitor guest book, a chicken coop, a hammock, a sheltered porch, a grove, walking trails and the sights and sounds of the countryside. The couple said they do not make money from the property, despite selling some flowers and collection of donations on site.

Glenda said that it feels right to welcome others to enjoy the space.

“We put a lot of work into it, and it just seems kind of silly to keep it to ourselves,” Glenda, 65, said.

Glenda said she sees the property as educational, promoting her passion for gardening and the outdoors. The retired Grade 1 teacher encourages people to learn more about gardening by spending time on the property — and shoved her hand into rich black soil along the ground to demonstrate.

“It opens your senses. It opens your eyes. Right now in the evening, the seagulls are so loud, it’s just amazing,” she said. “I like to share that with people.

“It makes me feel so much better to be outdoors, that I can’t imagine not having that, or wanting that.”

Two weddings are planned for the garden this summer, Grade 1 students from Neepawa and seniors from a local care home will visit, plus visitors will drop in. The property has also been used in the past for the Neepawa Area Collegiate’s rendition of Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Community members have supported the project in various ways — by donating decorative items like an antique wheel from a historic Brookdale grain elevator, for example, and other items such as benches and a church pew for relaxing. Monetary donations have also helped the couple keep the project going.

Joseph said people can visit between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. during the summer. He said he likes to talk with people on the property and see the positive effect that the outdoor garden can have.

“I love it,” he said. “They always go away so excited, and so amazed with what the garden and the trees are like.”

Joseph and Glenda said they want to offer outdoor experiences because it connects people with senses, allows people to explore and offers mental health benefits. Joseph pointed to a pelican flying over Lake Irwin in the distance.

“Look at that, just beautiful,” he said. “You don’t get that at an arcade.”

Brandon University chair of the philosophy department Steven Robinson said there’s an evolutionary reason people are drawn to gardens. They’re inherently beautiful because they represent a place that sustains human life, he said. That’s also a reason why people find comfort in visiting gardens, he said.

“When humans are looking for places to be, for environments or contexts that are friendly to humans, they are looking for things like open space with some vistas, trees, lots of greenery, flowers … and something like an obvious pathway going through,” Robinson said.

Flowers imply that food is coming, and pathways engender comfort and safety due to the feeling of not getting lost, he said. Gardens embody these characteristics and so they are beautiful to humans and attract us, he said.

“When we see a certain kind of place that has proven itself to be human friendly, we tend to have an emotional response to that.”

Despite business-friendly urban landscapes built for productivity, efficiency and speed, Robinson said, people have an evolved response to nature as the perfect human-friendly space.

“When we turn off the street and go into a garden, then we immediately get that sense of belonging and friendliness and safety and security that comes with being in that sort of naturally preferred space.”

Glenda stays busy during the summer working with that natural beauty every day — planning how to arrange the garden, and executing projects that she selects out for the year.

For his part, 79-year-old Joseph mows walking trails through the property and cleans up the grounds. Pushing the mower around keeps him fit, he said.

“It’s a labour of love is what it is,” Joseph said.

He said Glenda starts planting in December, growing plants inside the house during winter, moves them into the greenhouse in the spring and then into the garden in summer.

The spare bedroom of the couple’s home is occupied by seedlings planted on shelving with reflective material and indoor lights, as well as bins with plastic bags nurturing several types of flowers. Glenda keeps a filing-cabinet bin labelled by different flower species that she uses to begin projects indoors that will eventually show up in the garden.

The transition from hobby gardening to a more organized effort started more than 10 years ago when the couple operated a bed and breakfast in Neepawa, and offered garden tours at the business.

Raised on a farm, Glenda has gardened her entire life. The hobby took a turn when she finished her cancer treatment in 2003, she said, describing herself as undergoing a shift of mindset.

“For me that was a bit of a turning point,” she said. “I wanted to change (my) focus a bit more onto what I was passionate about.”

Now, she spends nearly every day of the summer, and many hours of the offseason, creating and maintaining a garden that she and others can enjoy.

The work was ramping up in May when the Sun visited. The late departure of winter had left less time for pre-season duties like moving flowers from the greenhouse to plant outdoors.

With the hobby outgrowing her in recent years, Glenda said that she will stop providing a subscription boquet service this season. With limited time and labour, the couple will focus on improving and maintaining what exists, rather than adding any large new projects going forward, they said.

»cmcdowell@brandonsun.com