Skip to content

Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society

Skip to content
  • The Garden
    • The Reader Story
    • Historical Timeline
    • Historical Photographs
  • Plan Your Visit
    • Location
    • Event Bookings
    • Reader’s Garden Cafe
  • News & Events
    • What’s New
    • Blog
    • Newsletters
    • Events Calendar
  • Get Involved
    • Join Us
    • Volunteer
    • Adopt A Bench
    • Donate
    • Contact
  • About Us
  • Member Login
    • Profile
    • Renewal
    • Logout
The Garden

The Garden
Garden Concept & Statistics

Garden Concept & Statistics
Plant Collection

Plant Collection

Not yet a member? Join us today! Register

Open from sunrise to sunset

FoRRGS AGM

April 2, 2026April 2, 2026
Blog Events News #ReaderRockGarden #yyc

Welcome 2026!

February 26, 2026
Blog Events News

Registrations Are Now Open!

February 4, 2026
Blog Events News

About Us

1

Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society ("FoRRGS") is a non-profit, volunteer advisory group that works in conjunction with the City of Calgary to uphold the integrity and beauty of this Legacy Park/Garden and National Historic Site.

One man’s vision

In 1913, William Reader had a vision which transformed the city landscape into a garden oasis. By 1943, over 4500 plant varieties had been lovingly cultivated in the three acres of land adjacent to Union Cemetary.

Today, the rehabilitation and progress of the Reader Rock Garden continues as we strive to maintain Reader’s vision.

Learn more.

 

 

readerrockgarden

📍 Canada’s First Green Flag Award Winner 🏆
📍 First Legacy Park in Canada
📍 Canadian National Historic Site
Some flowers wait quietly. Daffodils? They make an Some flowers wait quietly. Daffodils? They make an entrance. Reader Rock Garden April 30, 2026 #Daffodils #SpringGarden #GardenDiaries #HelloSpring
Please join us this Saturday, May 2nd, 10:00 AM-No Please join us this Saturday, May 2nd, 10:00 AM-Noon at the Reader House, basement Potato Room for our Annual General Meeting. Come by, meet our fabulous Team; find out what we’ve been up to. Door Prizes and Light Refreshments too. We’re also calling for a Membership Director. Training will be provided for this two-year term. An independent self-starter, computer-savvy person would be most welcomed. And, only four meetings occur annually. A job description for this volunteer role is available upon request. If you’d like to support this special National Historic Site, come join US! Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society [Est. 2003]
You wouldn’t have recognized Reader Rock Garden ba You wouldn’t have recognized Reader Rock Garden back then, not the way it looks now. It was overgrown and forgotten, a ghost of a garden buried under years of neglect. 🌿😔 Then CRAGS showed up with tables and plants for their plant sale at the garden. No fanfare, just dirt under their fingernails and a little sale that pulled people together like roots reaching for water in the dark. 🌱🪑 They met William Reader’s own grandson, Roland Reader, standing in the ruin of his grandfather’s dream, where the tangled beds once held flowers that bloomed with purpose. A box of old glass slides became digital archives preserved in city records forever. 🖼️📚 For years while the garden slept, these people kept its memory breathing without rest. Someone knelt in the weeds and lobbied year after year for a forgotten garden. Someone even gave a lecture begging for volunteers to come help with the weeding. Then a leader from the Denver Botanic Garden walked the site and wrote a letter that changed everything, a beautiful letter of support that made Parks Management stop and listen. ✉️💪 Then the restoration came, slow and steady like spring after a long winter. And now, 2026 marks twenty years since Reader Rock Garden came back to life. Twenty years of bloom, twenty years of roots deepening into saved soil. 🎉🌿 Sometimes the first step is just showing up with a table full of plants. A pocket full of hope and two hands willing to get dirty. 🪴💚 With gratitude to the many who saved this place, including: Monika Korsten, Donna Balzer, Barry Erskine, Anne Charlton, Archie Lang, David H. Matthews, Sheila Paulson, Pete Savage, Rob Graham, Daryl Cariou, Harry Sanders, Michelle Reid, Doug Marter, Roland Reader, Rod Shaver, Llyn Strelau, Betty Rose, George Peacock, Panayoti Kelaidis, and so many more whose names deserve to be spoken. Source: “Reader Rock Ramblings,” Nov 2009, Page 1 + email from Monika Korsten to Donna Balzer. #CRAGS #PlantSale #ReaderRockGarden #YYCSpring GardenHistory
Going to Reader Rock Garden? 🌸🌿 Let’s keep it magi Going to Reader Rock Garden? 🌸🌿 Let’s keep it magical and rule friendly. Here’s the fun cheat sheet 👇 ✅ Stroll only on trails and grass. Plants have feelings too (okay, maybe not, but let’s protect them). 🚫 No picking flowers, seeds or fruit. Let nature do its thing. 👠 Wear good shoes. Those historic slopes are sneaky. 🐦 Wildlife is wild. Look, don’t lunch them. 🚌 Groups of 15 max. Spread the love, not the crowd. 🚗 Park on the west side (25 Ave S.E.). Bumpy roads are part of the charm. 🧴 Washrooms? Only available for *patrons* of the cafe! Plan ahead so you can enjoy your time in the park without needing a bathroom break OR by making reservations at the restaurant. 💛 Be kind to fellow garden explorers. Let’s keep this historic gem gorgeous for everyone. 📸 Take them but book time if you’re a professional! 👉 Full etiquette lowdown here: https://www.calgary.ca/content/dam/www/csps/parks/documents/locations/reader-rock-etiquette.pdf #ReaderRockGarden #YYCParks #HistoricHygge #GardenEtiquette #YYCLiving
🌿 Walk with us through Reader Rock Garden for a mo 🌿 Walk with us through Reader Rock Garden for a moment. What you’re seeing today almost didn’t exist again. Behind this beauty sits something you’d never guess: a Restoration Database. 💾🤓 Twenty-two years ago, a team built it from four of Reader’s original manuscripts plus a plant list from 1936. It holds the memory of original plants still alive when restoration began back in 2004. That database now tracks exactly where most plant species grow in this garden today. It also keeps historical plant names alive. That turned out to be pure gold, because so many plants have been renamed over the years. Without that work, matching Reader’s original vision would have been nearly impossible. So when you stop to smell a flower or trace a border with your fingers, you’re standing inside years of obsessive, beautiful research. The garden restoration from twenty years ago was shovels and dirt, but also books and computers. Next time you visit, you’ll see the data hidden in the petals. 🌸 Source: Reader Rock Ramblings, 09 2009, Page 4 #ReaderRockGarden #GardenRestoration #YYC #HistoricPreservation
The year was 1943, and William Reader was 68 years The year was 1943, and William Reader was 68 years old. He had laid down his work less than one month earlier, after 29 years as Calgary’s Parks Superintendent. He barely had time to rest. You can find him now in Section S of the Union Cemetery in Calgary. It is a quiet plot for a man who built a garden full of noise and color and the smell of damp soil. His real monument is not the headstone. You have to walk to the garden to feel that. Every spring, the plants he chose push up through the ground again. Every visitor who walks the pathways moves through the shape of his attention. That is a different kind of memorial. You do not read it. You walk inside it. #InMemoriam #ReaderRock #YYCWinter #Legacy #WilliamReader Source: Reader Rock Ramblings, 09 2009, Page 1 Photo Credit: Glenbow Archives NA-4099-2 Photo located at: https://spadeandthegrave.com/2018/05/24/curious-canadian-cemeteries-union-cemetery-calgary-alberta/
Tucked away from the bustling paths of Reader Rock Tucked away from the bustling paths of Reader Rock Garden, there’s a little slice of history that feels like a secret. 🌿👒 Meet Martha Rose Reader’s Upper Garden. While William Reader poured his heart into the rest of the sweeping landscape, Martha had her own quiet retreat. A private spring sanctuary where she could escape, reflect, and watch the garden wake up below her. The grandchildren remember the rule well. You could only enter with permission. And best behaviour? Absolutely required. This was Martha’s space, after all. Imagine sitting there on a soft spring morning. No crowds. No tours. Just the rustle of new leaves and the first brave blooms. Pure peace. And here’s the beautiful part. That small sanctuary still exists today. You can still stand where she stood, breathe in the same calm, and feel a century of quiet history under your feet. 🌸 Visit with respect. Stay a while. And maybe channel your best behaviour. 😉 #HiddenGemYYC #CalgaryParks #YYCHistory
Most people do not think of cemeteries as gardens, Most people do not think of cemeteries as gardens, but William Reader did. Let us go back to 1914. The cemetery roads were muddy and uneven, so Reader graded them and saved every bit of loam for the grave plots. Then he hauled a thousand loads of cinders to surface everything. Whole sections of the cemetery were sunken and lumpy with old graves, so Reader regraded Section M and part of Section A until the ground was level and seeded and looked like somewhere you would not mind walking through. Those ugly wooden grave markers were rotting and leaning every which way, so he replaced them with cement ones that sat flush with the ground. His own men mixed the cement and poured the molds and set them in place. Cheaper, neater, kinder. He planted over two thousand trees that year plus thirty three hundred flowering plants for the borders. We see that same impulse in Reader Rock Garden today in the way every plant seems considered and nothing is just thrown in. When a huge storm washed roads away, Reader did not complain. He just installed drainage. But here is the part that really shows us who he was. The burial records before 1914 were a mess of handwritten notes and misfiled pages. People searching for loved ones would wait, sometimes a long time. So Reader spent that winter reorganizing everything by lot number and alphabetically. He made two lists instead of one. That is the work of someone who has imagined what it feels like to be the one searching. Every time we walk through this garden, we can picture him deciding where that spruce should go. He saw what needed doing and did it quietly and well, and we are still walking through the results more than a hundred years later. Source: Annual Report of the Parks Department, City of Calgary, 1914 / City of Calgary Corporate Records, Archives #ReaderRockGarden #YYCParks #CemeteryGardens #WilliamReader #GentleHistory
Follow our Flowers

 

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Google Maps
  • Email

© 2025 Friends of Reader Rock Garden Society (FoRRGS) All Rights Reserved