PAL head gardener Richard Cook. (*Photos Courtesy of Richard Cook)*

A SPECIAL ROOFTOP GARDEN
Performing Arts Lodge Vancouver

by Beth Lopez
(click images to enlarge)

For several years I had the pleasure of singing with the Vancouver Performing Arts Lodge (PAL) Chorus. I met many wonderful people and experienced the exhilaration of singing with others while learning from masterful directors. I also got to know the wonderful venue that is the eighth floor of PAL, located on Cardero just north of West Georgia.

PAL was built as an affordable housing residence for people who have worked in the performing arts in some capacity and was opened to its first residents in 2006. Besides the apartments, the building has a beautiful studio theatre complete with a green room, a lobby and kitchen set-up on the eighth floor. It is the theatre for the Western Gold Theatre Society and is often rented for other performance and special events.

If you have ever been to a show there, I hope you took advantage of the intermission to wander out into the garden. It is a great place to sip a drink and chat, or just wander and enjoy the beauty high above the city.

The original design for the garden was created by Jane Durante, a landscape architect. The hardscape hasn’t changed – the walkways, benches, tables and green house are as she designed — but the planting has evolved under the care and direction of Richard Cook. Richard spent his career designing theatrical sets and he is an accomplished painter. The garden has benefited from his artistic eye as well as his knowledge of gardens.

When PAL first opened, the garden was to be cared for by a garden committee. As so often happens with committees, there were many discussions and differing opinions, and changes were slow coming. Over time, the committee membership dwindled and eventually Richard took over stewardship of the garden. Now, he is now officially Head Gardener.

I had my theory confirmed once again about the creation of a gardener when I asked Richard how he had learned to love gardening. Richard grew up in South Africa. His home was surrounded by large grounds and his family had a gardener to care for them. As a child, he spent time working in the garden with the gardener and discovered that he could make magical things happen with seeds and cuttings. He was hooked. Children belong in gardens with someone who loves gardening.

Since taking on the work of caring for the PAL garden, he has removed a yew hedge that surrounded the garden, and some tall trees that were not suited to growing in such shallow soil. At its deepest, the garden soil is only 18 inches at the back, and it slopes down to six inches in the front. He replaced the lavender planted under the canopy because it needed far more sun and replaced it with heather, which is thriving.

He showed me the camellias, which were stunning. He planted three cultivars called “Devotion,” which are a vibrant pink, and one called “Lime Light,” which starts out white with a touch of green, turns a demure white at its peak and then shades into a dusty pink as the blooms fade.

Over time, PAL management has set up a budget to keep the garden beautiful. It’s an asset to the theatre and worth the investment.

View of the garden from the patio door of the PAl’s theatre lobby.

The wood edging around the garden was rotting out. All wood in a garden needs replacing eventually. When Richard asked for quotes to replace all the wood, the amount was far more than his budget. So he and two other residents removed the wood themselves and installed new boards. His helpers had construction experience and they had access to the carpentry shop in the building for the use of residents. The last hurdle was disposing of the rotten lumber.

At that time, there were two tall buildings going up across the street from PAL. The community tried to stop construction of the tall buildings, saying they would cast a long shadow over their garden, but the construction went ahead. Richard went and talked to the foreman who was in charge of the large waste bins where construction waste is dumped. The bins were filled and carted away regularly, new ones taking their place. Richard got permission to dump the rotted lumber into their dumpster and would take a wheelbarrow load over every couple of days. The final cost for the whole project was only the price of the new lumber.

One of the handymen also built raised beds, which were put in the corner beside the greenhouse and are used by the residents to grow vegetables.

The garden is organized from the back forward. The deepest soil at the back supports perennials such as the taller bushes and small trees and of course, the camellias. In front are the smaller heathers and ground cover, and soon there will be the annuals which provide splashes of brilliant colour.

Growing out of the taller mound is a beautiful work of art. The Leaf Vane is a stunning weather vane created by Doug Taylor. It was commissioned by Joy Coghill, one of the original movers behind the creation of PAL. She put in the vane as a memorial to John Thorne, her husband. At the base of the pole is this inscription by TS Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

When the garden first opened there were many residents who enjoyed working there, but, over time, fewer and fewer of them joined Richard in the garden work. Many residents are of retirement age and over the years the early gardeners have grown older. Getting down to weed and plant gets harder as we grow older and getting back up is even tougher. Richard has asked PAL management for an assistant to work with him and the team of a half-a-dozen dedicated volunteers who contribute their time, energy, and gardening expertise, but these things move slowly. In the meantime, he puts on his kneepads and gets down to weed and plant, and hauls numerous heavy bags of soil up to the roof garden.

I hope you get a chance to visit the theatre at PAL and stroll through the garden, especially in the next few months when it will be at its best.

To learn more about PAL Vancouver visit their website here.