Alexander Park

 

 

Imagine a marshy wetland, cattails, reeds and sedges, cedar and cottonwood stands nearby. Flickers flash their secret orange feathers. Pileated woodpeckers tap bark for bugs. Wood ducks wing in to nest their young in tree hollows, taking hatchlings for first swims in early summer. Frogs poke up from springtime hiding places, chorusing songs into the night air.

Where you are standing, Rock Bay Creek meandered through lowlands too damp to develop. Two blocks away on Garden Street, Chinese settlers kept market gardens at a spot chosen because of the abundant water. That historic garden continues, known now as Earthbound Community Garden, with allotment plots for avid growers of vegetables and flowers.

Small pocket parks and green spaces remain because they were too wet for earlier technology to build on. Now they are part of our community's treasured places where people play and dogs run. In the future you may see a rain garden, a bioswale or even a section of the old creek, its banks planted with native plants that help filter water on its reach to Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary in the heart of our city.