Deep-rooted reverence Vibrant Norwood apartment garden a labour of love to honour green thumb’s late partner By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026

St. Vital resident Rob Duncan can’t pinpoint when he first noticed an award-winning garden blanketing the grounds of a two-storey St. Mary’s Road apartment block, near Coniston Street.

Perhaps he was on his way home from work and caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. Or maybe he was running errands in the Norwood Flats area and paused to admire the array of annuals, perennials and potted plants that extends from the block’s doorway to the front curb.

What Duncan does know for certain is that after spying the urban oasis, twice fêted in Take Pride Winnipeg’s annual Winnipeg in Bloom competition, he couldn’t unsee it.

“First of all, the pink building really stands out,” Duncan says, referring to the brightly painted California Apartments complex at 268 St. Mary’s Rd. “But then you have the pergola, the rock garden, the flowers and trees… a sea of colour on a very busy street.”

Duncan goes on to report that sometimes when he’s been stuck in rush-hour traffic, he’s spotted an impeccably dressed woman there, watering patches of daisies and tiger lilies. Who is she, he’ll wonder? And how long has she been doing her part to enhance that stretch of roadway?

Rob Duncan, meet Beryl Boney, the person responsible for the garden former Manitoba premier Greg Selinger once lauded as a “highlight in the St. Boniface constituency.”

Boney, the block’s owner, started the project 26 years ago as a tribute to her late partner, Lynn Potter, who died in December 1999 at age 56.

“I moved in with Lynn shortly after he bought the building and we were due to get married in April 2000,” Boney says, seated in an aqua-blue Adirondack chair parked directly below the window of the second-floor, two-bedroom suite she shares with her Siberian husky, Kane.

“It was his dream to put in a garden, except he didn’t live long enough to see it through. It was only right that I continued what he envisioned, in honour of his memory.”

Boney, 71, was born in Trinidad and Tobago. The second-youngest of eight siblings grew up in San Fernando, a coastal city on the island of Trinidad.

A self-taught seamstress, Boney was 26 years old and working as a model when she successfully entered a beauty pageant, wearing a gown she designed herself.

Though she still regrets turning down a trip to New York City that was part of the first-place reward, she put the monetary portion of her prize to good use by opening a clothing business in Tunapuna, where her sister Eutlyn lived.

“Surefit Designs was the name of my company and besides sewing dresses for future Miss World and Miss Universe contestants, I was also a wardrobe consultant and fashion-show operator,” Boney says, leafing through a scrapbook filled with yellowed newspaper articles highlighting what she laughingly calls her “other life.”

“I became very famous in my country. I was on TV and radio all the time, and as soon as I started staging my own beauty pageant, Miss East Trinidad, my guests included everyone from the chief of police to the prime minister.”

As busy as Boney was — she also founded an annual three-day street festival in Arima that drew thousands — she always reserved two weeks every summer to visit another sister, Joan, who immigrated to Winnipeg from Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1980s.

Boney came to love the city and in 1995, two years after the birth of her son, Renaldo, she made the decision to move here as a single parent.

Of course, relocating to Winnipeg meant starting all over from scratch.

First, she took a set of apparel-design courses, primarily to familiarize herself with Canadian business practices. Next, she caught on as a quality-control inspector at Western Glove Works on Logan Avenue, a position that led to her being hired as a fashion consultant at Laura & Laura Petites’ Polo Park outlet.

Boney and her son were living on Cumberland Avenue when she met her late fiancé, just before he purchased what turned out to be her present-day home.

Boney didn’t understand the first thing about running and maintaining an apartment block following Potter’s death.

She was forced to quit her job and owing to the stress of dealing with tenants and lawyers, her weight dropped from 155 pounds to 110, she says.

Thankfully, she had the garden to look forward to. That being said, she wasn’t familiar with plants suited to Manitoba’s climate, so she sought help from down-the-street, open-air market Jardins St-Léon Gardens, whose owners happily passed along their know-how.

Before too long, she was expertly caring for begonias, day lilies, petunias and impatiens. She also unveiled a pair of mounted, red-and-white ornamental chickens, symbols of prosperity and fertility in her homeland that have become a favourite of passers-by.

“I got most of my stepping stones and patio furniture from Home Depot and Lacoste (Garden Centre), and the owner of Paul’s Greenhouse, a few blocks away, always gives me a good deal on plants and flowers,” Boney says, touring a visitor past beds set in brown mulch.

After pointing out roses, delphiniums and lilacs, she retreats to the rear of the building to show off a second garden boasting tomatoes, peppers and lettuce. (Sporting a snow-white dress and scarlet stilettos, Boney is careful not to catch a heel on an arch bridge spanning a faux creek filled with landscape stones.)

“There is a barbecue back here that tenants are able to use. And they’re also welcome to the produce, once it’s ripe,” she says, running a hand through the leaves of a fig plant, a recent inclusion.

“I also share with people who stop to have a look around and drop off cuttings from their own garden to add to what I have already.”

In a nod to her past, Boney occasionally utilizes her garden as a backdrop for fashion shows she stages under the banner Island Girl Creations. Former Manitoba Liberal leader Jon Gerrard has attended a number of those events and always leaves impressed by his host’s green thumb.

“Beryl has an amazing garden (and) converts a relatively small space into one that seems much bigger, with all the little walkways,” Gerrard says. “The care she takes over the plants and ornaments is remarkable.”

Gerrard wasn’t surprised to learn that Boney at one time designed formal wear. It’s clear she has an eye for fashion, he says, evidenced by how she expertly mixes and matches umpteen shades of flowers and shrubs.

“If there were more people like Beryl with her garden, what a colourful city we would have,” Gerrard states.

Boney, who has welcomed her share of wedding parties that stop by on their way to church to snap group photos, says vandalism has never been an issue.

“People respect the hard work I put in and I am so grateful for that,” she says, noting she can’t count the number of times she’s been gardening, only to look up and realize the sun has set, and she’s tilling in the dark.

Boney, who also keeps congratulatory letters from dignitaries such as former Manitoba premier Gary Doer and former Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz, shakes her head and chuckles when she is asked if her son, now 33 and a father of two, ever pops over to lend a hand.

“He’s always the first person to tell me how beautiful everything looks, but no, except for when he was young, he’s never been one to get his fingernails very dirty.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca