(Rose in Her Garden | 📸 MK Lascelle)

This is a story about a woman with a dream, her 5-acre garden, a dedicated family, the City of Pitt Meadows, their parks department and the backbone of any community, a team of enthusiastic volunteers. That dreamer was Rose Grabenhorst, a seasoned gardener, who I first met back in 1998 when I became the nursery manager at Amsterdam Garden Centre. She was a regular customer, blaming her car (a distinctive red PT Cruiser) for autonomously turning into the parking lot every time she tried to drive home, which was just around the corner. Needless to say, she was always on the lookout for unusual perennials, trees or shrubs and often brought me snippets of plants to identify from her personal botanical garden, many of which were quite rare and unknown to me at that time.

For Rose, the grand adventure began back in 1979, when the family moved to the Harris Road property, which was little more than horse pasture back then. Around 1985, she began planting Christmas trees and sometime later, when a few of these outgrew their indoor potential, the idea to create her own botanical garden was born. The host plants came from anywhere and everywhere, including friends, garden clubs, botanical garden sales, retail nurseries like Amsterdam and wholesale operations such as Piroche Plants, which specialized in rare Asian varieties. And she didn’t stop there, going on to hybridize her own rhododendrons from species such as R. calophytum and fortunei, eventually planting over 700 of them. So, when she passed peacefully in 2020, she left behind a one-of-a-kind plant collection.

(📸 MK Lascelle)

At the heart of Grabenhorst Garden is the Place of Remembrance, a basalt stone labyrinth centred around a gentle bubbling fountain meant to be a space of reflection. It was only after noticing Rose’s memorial plaque that I realized that I had not set foot in this garden for over five years, with my last visit being to cut some Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) branches for Rose’s celebration of life. North of this is the impressive Cypress Grove, where the water-loving Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) thrive with their knobby roots, along with other wet soil lovers such as Sweet Bay Magnolia (M. virginiana) sporting fragrant white flowers. Keep walking west and the storm water or retention ponds start appearing, allowing the public to enjoy year-round garden access, something which wasn’t possible in winters past without a good pair of gumboots. 

(📸 MK Lascelle)

As you stroll down the south side going east, this is where the garden looks much the same as Rose planted it, with paths meandering under arched rhododendron branches and towering conifers. I stumble upon a rare Bladdernut tree (Staphylea pinnata) hosting its unique dangling seedpods and I recall a funny story about them that she shared with me all those years ago. There are also hidden fairy gardens for children to discover and the gravel pathways throughout are wheelchair accessible. Trees can be adopted as a memorial, as I had already noticed one prominent weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’) dedicated to Sharon and Jack Rogers. The parks department has also a done stellar job of incorporating new gardens amongst the existing trees and shrubs, with even the back of a newly built shed sporting a stunning display of hydrangea.

(📸 MK Lascelle)

Perhaps the most shocking change and the one which would have left Rose speechless, is the fact that I did not notice any weeds during the entirety of my walk. I remember doing an article about her in 2006 when she had finally stopped fighting the relentless horsetail and had decided to just cut paths through it with a ride-on mower instead of pulling it. So, the many volunteers who removed brush, weeds and invasive plants deserve a big round of applause, although I was encouraged to see a dead birch snag left intact and repurposed as a wildlife habitat stump. It seems that everyone involved in the Grabenhorst Garden project have done their level best to make this a public park that is purpose-built for all of us to enjoy, and that attention to detail really shows.

(📸 MK Lascelle)

This level of cooperation highlights what is possible in a world where confrontation seems to be the new norm, and it’s encouraging to see the little guy, or in this case a determined woman, get the one thing she wanted most in life. For Rose, her wish to have her garden become a public park makes our community better by reminding us of nature’s beauty and the good that an individual can achieve, planting one tree at a time, and just hoping for the best. That hope was not wasted, and I am sure that I can speak for all of us who have walked through this Jewel of Pitt Meadows by simply saying a heartfelt…thank you, Rose.

(Rose in her Garden | 📸 MK Lascelle)

Copyright 2025 MK Lascelle