A cherished friend is missing from the garden. Francesco Aiello died on March 20. He was a founding member of the Burnaby and Regional Allotment Garden Association (BARAGA), a large community garden with 372 plots located in south Burnaby.
Born in Amato, Italy in 1925, Frank immigrated to Canada to make a new life. During the last three decades of his life, chances are you would find him working on one of his family’s plots in the northwest corner of BARAGA.
“Frank was friendly and welcoming when Larry and I moved to the plot next to his in 1994,” recounted Joan Campana. “He would often come over to where I was weeding and we’d visit for a few moments – or longer, if I could get him to tell a story. He was always ready to answer gardening questions.”
“Frank’s plants always seemed to grow better than mine, even when he gave me some of his to grow,” Larry Johnston told me. “He had a landscaper who delivered grass clippings to the parking lot and Frank would haul them by wheelbarrow to his plots. It was the only fertilizer I ever saw him use. He must have hauled tons of grass clippings over the years. And he was always generous with his produce, if he thought I was going home without enough he would push some of his on me.”
“We were always admiring his grapes,” Joan added, “so when we built our garden shed he gave us three varieties and soon our shed was covered with ‘Frank’s grapes.’”
“He was here early each day and worked hard,” Cecilia Gariup told me when I found her relaxing in the shade with Fernando Gallina under his grape vines. “When I first got my plot, it was covered in weeds. The guy who had the plot before was sick and couldn’t keep up. Frank helped me clear the plot.” Fernando echoed that, “He would help anybody.”
Frank embodied the true spirit of community. “Our new plot was overrun with weeds and under water for several months in the spring,” Larry remembered. “Frank helped me install a big ‘O’ drainage pipe in the pathways from my plot and between the two that he was gardening. We dug up the pathways, down several feet, laid the pipe and covered it with plastic and refilled the trench. Once the drain pipe was connected to the drainage ditch I was able to garden. Frank’s plots were raised high enough that he did not really need the drainage but he pitched in to help.”
Frank was 92. But you would never know it. Joan remembers him “walking along the top beam of the A-frame roof of his greenhouse.” She rushed over to express concern. “He just gave his usual broad smile, shook his finger at me, and said he was fixing something. He would have been in his late 70s.”
“Frank did not drive,” Larry Johnston recalls. “He came to the garden by bus. One day he came into the garden carrying a large beam on his shoulders. It had been left by the road and he carried it all the way to the plot himself. When I asked him how he managed it he said it was what he had done at work every day.”
Joan says, “I never saw Frank leave the garden in his gardening clothes – a pair of sturdy work pants and often a plaid, flannel shirt and undershirt. Before he left for the day to take the bus home, he always changed into well-pressed, immaculate pants and a clean shirt.”
I often offered Frank a ride, which he was reluctant to accept. He didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. The times he accepted, I would find him waiting in the parking area all cleaned up and smartly dressed.
“My wife Denise and I were gardening neighbors to Frank and his son Luigi for 31 years,” Greg McEwen wrote in a note he left in my greenhouse. “Frank’s wife was often here, too. I remember Frank used to say, ‘I use no machine, no nothing, just my shovel and my hands.’ Everyone at the garden will miss the three of them.”
“I miss his quiet generosity,” Heidi Rose said. “I miss the fountain of knowledge, his gardening advice so softly given to this novice gardener. I will remember always his warm welcome on my first day at the garden more than a decade ago. Frank said that people who work hard on the land were bound to be good people, and we should always help each other. I’d like to help spread that optimism and kindness.”
“Frank was such a skilled and knowledgeable gardener,” Andy Rose recalls, “but always friendly and unassuming, with no hint of attitude that he knew better than anyone else. Whenever he saw us working on our plot, near his, he always came over with a smile and an offer of help or something to eat or a glass of homemade wine….I took Frank as my role model. I thought, ‘When I’m in my 80s, that’s how I want to be’ – still out here practically every day tending the garden, growing food for the family, enjoying the air and the birds and the plants, helping my neighbors. So I’m raising a glass of my own homemade wine – here’s to you, Frank!”
Our northwest corner of BARAGA is certainly not the same without Frank, his wife Maria and son Luigi, who all died in the last eighteen months.
Larry speaks for us all when he says “Frank always had time for a story or two when I came to the garden. Sometimes I did not have much time for the stories as I was rushing to get some gardening in before or after work. I hoped there would be a time when I would be retired too and there would be more time for stories.”
