The colourful leaves were falling and there was a chill in the air at Valley View Public School last October as students planted 1,000 tulips bulbs in a pattern they hoped would turn out to look like a Canadian flag.
Those red and white bulbs lay dormant under a blanket of snow all winter, but now they've emerged from the sun-warmed ground and bloomed. And guess what?
“If you look closely, you will see it does look like a Canadian flag,” said Darlene Malin, the school's secretary, one of the project's organizers.
“Our whites aren't quite as open as they could be. In the next couple days it will definitely be showing a little bit better. In a way I'm not surprised. Somehow Valley View comes out and does these things, and they work out for us.”
The school won the tulip bulbs as part of the Canada's 150th Anniversary Celebration Garden Giveaway, spearheaded by the Canadian Garden Council.
Malin got the idea to enter the contest last summer after seeing it in a gardening magazine, and to her delight, the school was one of the winners.
To celebrate the blooming of the tulips, Valley View Public School held an early Canada Day celebration May 18.
Students dressed up in their best red and white Canada Day gear and sang songs at a ceremony attended by Mayor Brian Bigger and other local officials.
Valley View principal Chantal Lacroix said she's “ecstatic” about how the tulip garden turned out.
“It's very exciting, and it makes you even more proud to be Canadian,” she said. “We didn't know what was going to happen … but Mother Nature took care of all of it.”
Grade 5 student Chloe Vincent said she thinks the tulips look amazing and beautiful. “It's like your own Canadian flag, but homemade though,” she said.
