This month, we’ve been spending time in the Delta Garden. Almost a year into existence, the plants are beginning to flourish, the design is integrating into the cityscape, and (best of all) people are using the space. Seniors rest, couples flirt, kids run around searching for treasure, cyclists dodge benches, and thousands of pedestrians visit the Peace Bridge.

Summer is kind in Calgary, and people are basking in its glow, stretching out into parks and public space, looking for adventure and each other.

Nights are warm and full of potential. Calgarians ride bikes and e-scooters through the city, creating chaos on the bike paths in the darkness.

The heat guides Calgarians towards the river. Rafters float by lazily. Beavers nibble on the undergrowth nearby. Children wade. Tourists snap smartphone photos. Squirrels scamper between trees. Occasionally, someone stops long enough to notice fragments of text, embedded in the pavement underfoot.

We’re still waiting on an art didactic, any sort of signage to indicate the meaning of the monuments. But there’s something fascinating about the mystery of the installation now – without any sort of explanation, the monuments read like cryptic micro-narratives, invocations, internal voices.

Seeing Delta Garden + The City Unseen from above solidified something for us. So many projects are designed in plan view, an impossible bird’s eye perspective seldom seen when experiencing the space. The view from above felt somehow familiar and alien, like looking at a landscape out the window of an airplane and finally recognizing the holistic topography of a place.

We look forward to watching Delta Garden + The City Unseen continue to settle in, to age, to sprout + flourish + become. Our small part (one aspect of so many in West Eau Claire Park!) is done, and we are “finally happy and satisfied.”