–by Karen Connolly, Licenced Property & Strata Manager, Kelowna.

Mission Creek Towers’ gardens were looking tired. The developer’s landscapers had covered the soil in the raised gardens and other beds with a good 4-6 inches of bark mulch–in some areas, almost 8 inches. Over time, some of the bark mulch broke down, but much of it also blew away with the wind.

To make matters worse, a heavy clay soil was used by developers for garden beds in the newest phase of the development. Apparently this seems to be standard practice these days. This soil was also topped with an extremely heavy layer of bark mulch. Not only was the clay soil near to impossible to work with in the new gardens, the older gardens had gone 5 years without soil improvements of any kind except for a seasonal application of slow-release chemical fertilizers.

Garden committee members along with our current landscape contractor wanted to work together on a plan to improve soil conditions without continuing to use fertilizers, with an end goal of establishing a healthy, easy-to-maintain, environmentally friendly growing environment for the existing plant material and future garden bed additions.

Did we meet Dean at the farmer’s market?  You betcha…his display got our attention last fall and we followed up with a site visit at his “soil compound” early this spring.

We were impressed with his product, and with the support of Mission Creek’s strata council, had our landscaper order a 15-20 yard truck load of his “wormy” compost in May of this year. We used this mixture to top up a number of our old beds, and amend, where possible the clay soil in the some of the new beds. Within weeks we had the gorgeous display of flowering perennials and annuals depicted in your photo.

We have not used fertilizers of any kind this year. As a matter of fact, aside from a little bone meal applied when planting a few new shrubs early in the growing season, nothing has been added to our soil, except Dean’s compost. Considering the impressive results we’ve had this year, you can bet we’ll be looking to add more of Dean’s product to the remaining beds still in need of a pick-me-up.