INNISFAIL – The annual visits by the deer population has for too long made life miserable for the town’s dedicated gardeners.
Year after year the ungulates have raided the crops produced at the Innisfail Community Garden and members have now had enough.
Marion Davidson, the club’s community garden and greenhouse manager, said members went to the Town of Innisfail in 2022 about the longstanding problem and they were soon supplied with metal posts for installation.
Garden club members then erected a temporary 400-foot long and six and a half-foot high deer fence around the entire community garden and greenhouse that is located beside Dodd’s Lake Manor.
“Once our spring crop is in and coming up before everything else the deer of course really see it as a buffet,” said Davidson. “That helps protect the open beds too when we moved the greenhouse to a second location for the summer crops.
“So yes, we've had a lot of deer problems over the years.”
Davidson said the temporary structure worked “really well” in keeping the deer out in 2022 but the club has since approached the town for a more permanent fence.
She said the town has “tentatively agreed” to supply the required 37 posts and install them this spring.
“We will meet soon to finalize the details on this,” said Davidson.
Steven Kennedy, director of operations manager for the Town of Innisfail, told the Albertan he did not have any information to offer at this time on the planned fence but he did say the town was “setting up a meeting to review the scope and details” of the proposed project.
With details of the proposed permanent deer fence still to be worked out between the town and club, Davidson said a current estimate of the total cost of the project materials will be around $1,700, plus the cost of installation and the building and installation of four gates.
“We are still researching to find someone willing and capable of erecting the fence and the gates and to build the gates,” said Davidson.
However, with the installation of the temporary fence last year, and the planned permanent one for 2023, another problem has been identified. Senior members do not have a proper place to rest.
“We have quite a few seniors and we don’t have a bench. We wanted a bench inside the (fenced) compound,” said Davidson.
She said the town’s new Men’s Shed, Innisfail group offered to help.
“They said, ‘is there anything that we can do to help the community garden? So, we asked what they had in mind because they were building things,” said Davidson. “They said, ‘could we build you a bench?
“And then we needed some more high raised beds for some of our seniors who are not able to bend. We only have two. We needed some more,” she added. “And now they've got a pattern and they're going to build some more.”
Davidson said the town has agreed to help install the new bench close to the community garden plots and beds this spring.
“We got a spot picked out for it. Our seniors and families will really appreciate having a place to rest while gardening,” she said, adding the club is grateful for the support from Men’s Shed, Innisfail.
“We’ve had quite a high demand for more higher raised beds for seniors over the past couple of years so we are grateful to move on this in such a partnership.”
Any citizen interested in helping the Innisfail Community Garden, either financially by donation or by offering their time and experience in erecting the deer fence and building or erecting gates, he or she is requested to call Davidson at (403) 227-0377 or cell at (403) 341-0542.
