~ Touring Paulik Gardens Neighbourhood Park in Richmond ~
Vancouver Master Gardener Jill W, showed me some of the highlights of Paulik Gardens Neighbourhood Park on Halloween 2021. With my lens being trees, we ambled through the Circle Garden, past the Perennial Garden,
We ended our tour in the northwest corner of the park, admiring the tallest Ginkgo biloba I’ve ever seen.
Still with all its lemon yellow leaves on October 31, this ginkgo is beyond the House of Roots and the temporary tent erected after our heat dome this summer. One day all these ginkgo leaves will fall almost at once, so typical of ginkgo trees, creating a fresh yellow carpet before the wind takes them away.
There’s something happening for everyone at Paulik Park, whether it is watching the results of hours of gardening; pruning the multi-headed boxwood ( Buxus Sempervirens) topiary
( just look at the age of those trunks )
or maintaining the shape of a weeping mulberry shrub; adding wood chips to the once-grassy paths and around the tall Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis); or planting in the perennial garden where the original Paulik homestead once stood.
When the Richmond Garden Club decided in 2008 to approach the City of Richmond and offer to garden the landscape area in a traffic circle, the city had a better idea. They wanted the club members to take over gardening the adjoining Ohler and Paulik properties that the city had purchased some years earlier.
Back in the 1920s, Dr. Max Paulik and his wife, Irene, began farming a piece of land at 7620 Heather Street. The couple had four children: Will, Edgar, Wally, and Valentine. Irene managed the ornamental garden around the house, while Max took care of the forested area. Max had worked as a chief forester in Germany and became a local BC forestry expert.(1) Soon after the Lions Gate Bridge was completed through Stanley Park late in 1938, Max Paulik drove to the North Shore to gather evergreen seed cones. The eighty-year-old trees that resulted from those forays create a beautiful forest in the park today.
A spokesperson for the CCF Economic Planning Commission, Max Paulik was quite influential regarding provincial forestry, writing a pamphlet, “Reforestation Policy of British Columbia.” Indeed, his views were central in the creation of a 1943 forest policy based on the principles of sustained-yield forestry.(2)
After the death of his parents, Max and Irene’s son Captain Edgar Robert Paulik became the last of the family to work the land, staying on to care for the plants after having sold the property to the city.
Meanwhile, next door, as it were, lived the Ohlers, founders of the Lulu Island Water Gardens, a horticultural business specializing in aquatic plants.(3)
Considering the City of Richmond’s request to maintain the grounds at Paulik Park (the six acres at 7620 Heather Street), Richmond Garden Club had much to consider. After some discussion and much trepidation within the club, twenty of the garden members decided to take it on.(4) Now, thirteen years later, there are forty volunteer gardeners plus many neighbours who care for and enjoy spending time in this neighbourhood park.
The space is wonderful for dog and cat walks, and eagle sightings. It’s flat enough to stroll around for someone who uses a walker. There are big spaces for family gatherings and plein air painting classes, and there’s a children’s playground on the south side. The community garden in the east enables local homeowners to grow their own fruits and vegetables.
Several of the plants need to be mentioned.
Several English oak, Quercus robur, grow in the park. Q. robur has almost no petiole, making the leaves sessile, whereas the acorns grow on long peduncles, giving the species its other common name—pedunculate oak.
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Near the southern entrance to the park is a red maple, Acer rubrum, with girdling roots. It has died. However, it is still standing tall, so it will provide a lesson for many years to come on how to plant trees, ensuring their roots are able to spread out.
Two red exes on the photograph show where the strings and burlap around the root ball might have been left on during planting.
A showy array of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, a.k.a. smooth hydrangea or wild hydrangea, sports its drying inflorescences.
An ornamental cherry enroute to the forest area has grounded itself into such fascinating shapes that it looks like a jungle gym for squirrels.
A Himalayan white pine, Pinus wallichiana, a five-needled pine, is spiralling its way up, year by year.
Its cones can grow as long as 30 cm (12 in.).
A thicket of Thujopsis dolobrata—a coniferous evergreen with the common name “hiba”—offers visitors a chance to see this monotype, the only species in the Thujopsis genus. At first glance, hiba is hard to distinguish from western redcedar (Thuja plicata). But a closer look reveals many differences. Whereas western redcedar mostly grows a single trunk with a wide root flare, hiba has a habit of lowering its main branches to the ground, establishing yet another trunk of itself in the soil. This particular thicket now has more than thirteen trunks: a proud stand.
The crowning difference between hiba and western redcedar, however, is noticeable in the needles. The front surface of hiba’s overlapping scale leaves are fleshier, creating a profile that is more angular than on a redcedar.
But just turn that frond over to look at the pattern of white stomata on the back. Art can never compete with nature.
Even on the habitat pile, a decomposing frond of hiba is a beautiful sight to behold.
Richmond gardeners are experienced at working with soil that has built up over the centuries from Fraser River effluent, resulting in peat that rests on clay and sand—rather an unstable substrate. It presents unusual challenges when plants, more particularly mature trees, develop a tilt from having their roots in peat rather than in a loam they can hold onto.
Some trees also dislike the high moisture content of the soil. For instance, Colorado blue spruce is unhappy having wet roots. Some of the western hemlocks are also unhappy, with dead needles among the green ones. Gardening is nothing if not challenging, no matter the space.
A sign erected in 2009 says Paulik Gardens Neighbourhood Park “contributes to the revitalization of the surrounding neighbourhood.” It’s also a garden to which people donate the bonsai tree that’s outgrown its pot, the perennial that provides a colourful ground cover, and the tree that’s growing too broad for its original planting space. The park has been a blessing locally during Covid. Under the direction of members of the Vancouver Chapter of Master Gardeners, Paulik Park shows off appealing colour and form no matter the season.
by Nina Shoroplova, Vancouver Master Gardener Student
1 Gordon Hak, Capital and Labour in the British Columbia Forest Industry, 1934-74, UBC Press, 2007.
2 Eryk Martin, “When Red Meets Green: Perceptions of Environmental Change in the B.C. Communist Left, 1937-1978.” B.A. (Honours), University of Victoria, 2006. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History.
3 www.richmond.ca/__shared/assets/Paulik_Gardens_051208_CO20306.pdf | www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/vancouver-bc/peter-ohler-10227485
