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Francisca Darts born Francisca Maria Koster in The Hague, Netherlands on 15 March 1916, moved to Canada to join her father Fredrik when she was nine years old. She sailed from Rotterdam on the Nieuw Amsterdam on 23 February 1926 with her mother Hendrika and sisters Louise and Marie Antoinette. [1]
She became an accomplished figure skater in Flin Flon, Manitoba where she spent her formative years. She attributed her success to her use of traditional Dutch skates with steel blades and wooden footplates. The extreme weather in Flin Flon also allowed her to later become a champion curler.
Her life's project [2] was the 7.5 acres of rough, stump-covered land in South Surrey, British Columbia that she and her husband Edwin (Ed) purchased in 1942, now known as Darts Hill Garden Park. In 1994, she was being pressed to sell her land to developers who were keen to build condos on the site, but instead of selling, she donated it to the City of Surrey, providing an endowment for its on-going upkeep so its collection of rare and unusual trees and shrubs could be enjoyed by citizens and visitors for years to come. [3]
An accomplished horticulturist, she had several plants named after her, including Primula × 'Francisca', [4] and was very active in collecting and sharing seeds and cuttings with other gardeners. [5] Ever the low impact gardener, she discovered that Lifebouy soap suspended in old pantyhose was a great perimeter deterrent against deer. [6]
Darts died on 26 December 2012. [7]
Beatrix Cadwalader Farrand was an American landscape gardener and landscape architect. Her career included commissions to design about 110 gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanic gardens, college campuses, and the White House. Only a few of her major works survive: Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden on Mount Desert, Maine, the restored Farm House Garden in Bar Harbor, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, and elements of the campuses of Princeton, Yale, and Occidental.
Lancelot "Capability" Brown was an English gardener and landscape architect, a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style.
Flin Flon is a mining city, located on a correction line on the border of the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with the majority of the city located within Manitoba. Residents thus travel southwest into Saskatchewan, and northeast into Manitoba. The city is incorporated in and is jointly administered by both provinces.
Stanley Park is a 405-hectare (1,001-acre) public park in British Columbia, Canada, that makes up the northwestern half of Vancouver's Downtown peninsula, surrounded by waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The park borders the neighbourhoods of West End and Coal Harbour to its southeast, and is connected to the North Shore via the Lions Gate Bridge. The historic lighthouse on Brockton Point marks the park's easternmost point. While it is not the largest urban park, Stanley Park is about one-fifth larger than New York City's 340-hectare (840-acre) Central Park and almost half the size of London's 960-hectare (2,360-acre) Richmond Park.
Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson's The Garden. Jekyll has been described as "a premier influence in garden design" by British and American gardening enthusiasts.
Lois Elsa Hole, CM, AOE DStJ was a Canadian politician, businesswoman, academician, professional gardener and best-selling author. She was the 15th Lieutenant Governor of Alberta from 10 February 2000 until her death on 6 January 2005. She was known as the "Queen of Hugs" for breaking with protocol and hugging almost everyone she met, including journalists, diplomats and other politicians.
Graham Stuart Thomas was an English horticulturist, who is likely best known for his work with garden roses, his restoration and stewardship of over 100 National Trust gardens and for writing 19 books on gardening, many of which remain classics today. However, as he states in the Preface to his outstanding book, The Rock Garden and its Plants: From Grotto to Alpine House, "My earliest enthusiasms in gardening were for....alpines." p8
Bakers Narrows, Manitoba, is a small residential community approximately 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Flin Flon on Lake Athapapuskow. There are five subdivisions located near the lakeshore with a total of approximately 150 cottages, many of which are permanent residences.
Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property. It encompasses a diverse range of people and motivations, ranging from gardeners who spill over their legal boundaries to gardeners with a political purpose, who seek to provoke change by using guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action.
Denare Beach is a northern village on the east shore of Amisk Lake, Saskatchewan. Located on Highway 167, the community is 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Flin Flon and 422 kilometres (262 mi) north-east of Prince Albert.
Island Falls is a hydroelectric power station operated by SaskPower, a Saskatchewan crown corporation. It is located on the Churchill River, about 97 kilometres (60 mi) northwest of Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada.
Painshill, near Cobham, Surrey, England, is one of the finest remaining examples of an 18th-century English landscape park. It was designed and created between 1738 and 1773 by Charles Hamilton. The original house built in the park by Hamilton has since been demolished.
The 1957 Memorial Cup final was the 39th junior ice hockey championship of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA). The Flin Flon Bombers won their first Memorial Cup championship by defeating the Ottawa Junior Canadiens four games to three in a best-of-seven final series held at the Whitney Forum and the Regina Exhibition Stadium. CAHA second vice-president Gordon Juckes oversaw the scheduling and discipline for the national playoffs.
Thistle Yolette Harris, was born as Yolette Thistle Harris, but mostly known as Thistle Stead, was an Australian botanist, educator, author and conservationist.
Barbara Ann Scott was a Canadian figure skater. She was the 1948 Olympic champion, a two-time World champion (1947–1948), and a four-time Canadian national champion in ladies' singles. Known as "Canada's Sweetheart", she is the only Canadian to have won the Olympic ladies' singles gold medal, the first North American to have won three major titles in one year and the only Canadian to have won the European Championship (1947–48). During her forties she was rated among the top equestrians in North America. She received many honours and accolades, including being made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991 and a member of the Order of Ontario in 2008.
Sylvia Grace Borda is a Canadian artist-urban geographer working in photography, video and emergent technologies. Borda has worked as a curator, a lecturer, a multimedia framework architect with a specialization in content arrangement (GUI) and production. Born and raised in Vancouver, Borda is currently based in Vancouver, Helsinki, and Scotland. Her work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally.
Haruko Okano is a process-based, collaborative, multidisciplinary, mixed-media artist, poet, community organizer, and activist based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Darts Hill Garden Park is a public garden situated within a property located at 1633-170th Street in South Surrey, near the town of White Rock. It is in the City of Surrey, BC, Canada.