After decades of offering gardening tips and advice, Burnaby NOW columnist Anne Marrison is calling it quits.
Marrison, now 79, was born in England but now lives in Maple Ridge and is beginning to take on more of a caregiver role with her husband. She’s is retiring the column so she has more time to do what she loves – gardening.
“I’m older and slower and I long to be able to garden again. My garden has gotten in appalling shape,” Marrison said. “I love the garden questions. To me those people are all my friends, but that takes time, too, and I’d like to have a few more years gardening.”
Marrison worked for decades as a community reporter and started writing her gardening column in the 1980s. She also wrote for the Burnaby NOW and retired roughly 15 years ago but kept the gardening column going, answering questions from avid green thumbs. Her column ran in community papers across the Lower Mainland. Marrison’s farewell gardening column will likely run in early March in this paper.
When asked why she loves gardening, Marrison recalled her past in England, where “everybody gardened.”
“I came from a background where if you didn’t plant vegetables in your garden, you didn’t always get through the winter,” she said. “I come from several generations of land lovers.”
