Victor Cicansky’s Gazebo Blossoms at Grow Regina Yara Community Garden
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 3, 2021
Today marks a joyful milestone at the Grow Regina Yara community garden, where a beautifully designed gazebo by beloved local artist Victor Cicansky is being installed.
Thanks to a generous $90,000 grant from Federated Co-op two years ago, the community has patiently awaited this new addition. This structure seamlessly blends art and nature, allowing all to enjoy it.
Grow Regina’s community garden has long been a sanctuary for both cultivation and creativity, adorned with striking artworks, including two monumental sculptures flanking its entrance, also crafted by Victor Cicansky back in August 2010. For Victor, gardens are not just places of growth, but endless wells of artistic inspiration.
His 2019 memoir, Up From Garlic Flats, rooted in Regina’s east end community, reflects his deep ties to the garden heritage passed down from his Romanian ancestors.
Much of Victor’s artwork draws directly from garden life—from sculpted roots and trees, to garden tools like shovels and spades, and even the bounty of the harvest: fruits, vegetables, and canning jars. A Regina Post article from June 2019 lauded his piece Compost Shovel, describing it as:
“A gigantic blue ceramic shovel covered in vegetables, eggshells, and soil.”
The new gazebo, with its sculpted trees serving as support beams, a leafy canopy overhead, and railings adorned with a vibrant harvest of vegetables from the garden, is destined to become a landmark—a place for gathering, celebration, and reflection. Once installation is complete later this week, it will host a variety of community functions, ushering in a new chapter for this cherished garden sanctuary.
May this artistic gazebo inspire all who visit to see the beauty thriving where nature and creativity meet.
