| Hudson
Bay Post Archives - Churchill Hothouse
Sand,
Seaweed & Soil Make Churchill's Greenhouse a Success
‘With
a mixture of seaweed, sand, peat moss and soil gathered from the
shores of shallow lakes, plus countless hours of hard work, a
Churchill couple is operating a unique gardening experiment on
the rocky shore of Hudson Bay…’
-from ‘Northern hothouse succeeds’, Winnipeg Free
Press, Saturday, August 17, 1985
It
is a rainy Sunday afternoon on the coast of Hudson Bay, almost
20 years to the day after this article was written, and I am touring
this ‘unique garden’ with Bill and Diane Erickson,
the hard working Churchill couple who pioneered Boreal Gardens
in 1973, as a long-term research project studying viable food
plants for the north.
The
tour begins inside ‘Super Tunnel’, a large greenhouse
made of wood framed tunnels covered in translucent fiberglass.
Under cover of ‘Super Tunnel’, one of three greenhouses
at Boreal Gardens, the growing season may extend more than six
months (180-200 days), compared to less than three available outside
(around 81 not-necessarily-consecutive frost-free days). Plants
grow up trellises and on raised beds of soil, peat, seaweed and
lake bottom, underlain by bricks, which hold the much needed heat
through the night.
They
grow potatoes, peas, beans, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and cucumbers.
Zucchini and other squash, with their large yellow flowers, grow
up and off the ground in ‘cages’. Raspberry bushes
are loaded with berries, as is the strawberry patch. Beet greens
and swiss chard and kale are all huge and colorful, beaming even.
The lilies and dahlias and hollyhocks are all blooming, and the
clematis is growing like mad, a sharp contrast to the tiny ground
hugging tundra outside.
Each
spring, they grow bedding plants for sale, and in the summer their
rhubarb pies have been a big hit at Gypsy’s Bakery for years.
They pick and preserve local berries, selling their jams and jellies
in gift shops around town. This is truly a labour of love, for
while such marketing may help to offset the cost of operating
the greenhouses a bit, it hardly covers the hours of work and
volunteer hours required to keep a ‘northern hothouse’
functioning.
Boreal
Gardens was the Erickson’s project from the beginning. Boreal
Gardens was just another gravel pit being used as a dump site.
Even so, being granted permission to build the greenhouses there
was not easy, but build they did. And in addition to their greenhouses,
they’ve also built a 3 300 square-foot house with an above
ground basement, and large picture windows set 12ft off the ground,
overlooking Hudson Bay.
Everything
you see at Boreal Gardens is the result of a personal investment
of both time and money. The Ericksons were their own construction
crew, along with lots of volunteers, building it, literally, from
the ground up, working rain or snow or shine.
Boreal
Gardens is not only an example of perseverance and team work (Bill
says ‘Diane does most of the gardening, but once the tomatoes
are in the tubes, I take over’), but of creativity as well.
Over the years, it has become a study in energy efficiency and
an example that more of the north should be following.
With
water being the limiting factor in the greenhouse, the couple
takes advantage of the snow run-off into the ponds each spring,
both to water the plants and to sustain the hydroponic tomatoes
that are thriving in the original greenhouse - the one they finished
building even before their house.
From
1980-88 Boreal Gardens was the test site for a 50 kWatt wind turbine,
a co-operative project between the Churchill Northern Studies
Centre, the National Research Council, Indal Technologies Inc.
and Manitoba Hydro. The power generated by the wind mill went
directly into the town grid.
They
have had a composting toilet since 1974, and a well in the basement
that taps into a natural spring that runs for six months out of
the year. They store water for the remainder of the year in a
heavily insulated holding tank outside the house.
I
leave Boreal Gardens impressed and inspired, partly because I
love plants, but more so in appreciation of the work involved
in creating this ecosystem; designing it, building it, and maintaining
it…as a work in progress and as an example of the true pioneer
spirit.
-
prepared by Carmen Spiech, first appearing in the Hudson Bay Post,
Churchill, Manitoba's monthly newspaper published occasionally
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