These crocuses are blooming in the garden in front of the Plant Recreation Centre at the corner of Somerset and Preston Streets.

The lovely garden at the corner was built, planted, and is maintained by community volunteers. It is on city-owned land. It illustrates the power of volunteer community action.

Personally, I feel the City tries to do too much — too much of what I don’t want, and not enough of what I do want. And too much of what it shouldn’t be doing could be done perfectly well by others. Can you image the tax load if the city had to plan, implement, maintain (inventory each plant on a database??) the three public gardens along these few blocks of Somerset? Instead, some cooperation (letting gardeners garden), a few resources (some grant money to get some of the gardens started), and ongoing support limited to the occasional linking up to a city tap … yields great results.