January is a crucial month for a gardener. Like a blank canvas to a painter, a gardener’s imagination allows the frosty white rectangle beyond the window to explode with green growth and bright colors. By the end of the month, seed catalogs are dog-eared, orders are penciled in, and colorful dreams and schemes begin to solidify into a plan.

So it was on this day in 1932, when a group of North Dakota and Manitoba gardeners—and dreamers—went public with their plans for a new garden in the Turtle Mountains that would span the 49th parallel between Dunseith, North Dakota and Boissevain, Manitoba. Not a vegetable garden, mind you—but a 3,000-acre plot containing hills and trees and lakes to be dedicated as a natural monument to peace.

The sponsors announced, “The site will be known as the international peace garden. Free of commercialism, and the land, half in the United States and half in Canada will be a shrine to peace.”

For several years, people had been gathering in the “shady recesses of the Turtle Mountains” for annual “peace picnics” that celebrated the long history of peaceful relations between the two nations. It was out of these peace picnics, which were attended by as many as 5,000 people, that the dream of a permanent memorial was born.

The founders envisioned a natural landscape complemented by the work of “leading gardeners and landscape artists” of both nations. Their vision excluded any commercial development. They were seeking legislation that would disallow any “gasoline stations, road houses, dance pavilions and other resorts” within five miles of the park—providing a “protected zone” in all directions.

No small thinkers, they asked for five million dollars in support, right in the middle of America’s Great Depression—over 70 million in today’s dollars. One-fifth would be used for “direct improvements of the park,” and four-fifths would be set aside as a permanent endowment to assure proper maintenance down through the years.

The organizers targeted “the nickels and dimes of American and Canadian school children,” as well as adults, service clubs and state and provincial governments for support. They did not ask for Federal support.

Perhaps the financial bleakness of the 1930s, and the fears and uncertainties of those years between the two world wars, helped fuel the imaginations of the peace garden planners.

The plans of January looked forward to July of the same year, when citizens and officials would gather for the formal dedication of this unique enduring garden at the center of North America—the International Peace Garden.

Source:
N.D. Peace Garden Plans Dispel Lowering War Clouds. The Fargo Forum. 31 Jan 1932: p.4.

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