Eleanor Kidd is credited with championing for Brandon's SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and Brandon Humane Society back in 1947.

In her honor a beautiful Victorian garden was established near the Assiniboine River where weddings and concerts were held, surrounded by fountain plazas, tea roses and other beautiful plants you'd typically find in an English garden.

The flooding of the Assiniboine River in 2011 and then again in 2014 rendered the site and those beautiful flowers and bushes destroyed. And then the park was abandoned, until Bee City Brandon took the project under their wings, you might say, in partnership with the City of Brandon.

Bee City Brandon Committee Chair, Sherry Punak-Murphy says with the river dike being raised the grounds are protected from further flooding and in that they are wanting to restore the park back to its former glory.  She says the plant life will be restored, but not with delicate tea roses and peonies. They will be establishing plants and flowers native to Manitoba that can survive the rains and droughts of the prairies. 

The project has been underway for only about a year.  The City of Brandon has helped to bring in loads of fresh dirt, and volunteers have helped to clean up the grounds.  In a few months, spring planting will take place!

"We hope to have a beautiful garden, a place where there is a native prairie garden where we will have educational events, like: How to create a pollinator garden. What are our native pollinators? Indigenous teachings on native plants."

"I always say we're about pollinators, plants and people," she adds. "So, we're not dealing with honeybees and things like that. We're dealing with the over 390 bee species we have in Manitoba!"

With the establishment of native plants to Manitoba's prairie climate, these plants and flowers will be able to sustain drought conditions as well as heavy rains, "because they're from here. They're not like the Victoria gardens with the beautiful roses and the petunias or the peonies that can't handle those kinds of conditions," shares Murphy.

"They need to be taken care of whereas native plants, once we get them established, which will take 3-5 years, they can survive on their own. And if you build it, the pollinators will come!"

Did you know that Brandon has its own official bee?  The orange-belted bumble bee!