EP 04 · Canada Stories
A Clock Made of Flowers
Forty feet across, planted tens of thousands deep, and keeping time since 1950 — somebody has to replant this clock twice a year, and somebody does.
Most clocks ask to be believed. This one asks to be watered. North of the falls, along the parkway, the ground itself opens into a clock face forty feet wide — numerals, hands, and the words NIAGARA PARKS all grown out of living plants, with a small stone tower keeping watch behind it. It really tells time. It has told time since 1950, through summers of heat and winters when coloured stones take the flowers' place.
Think about the labour folded into it. The face is planted with up to twenty-four thousand small carpet plants, and the pattern is changed with the seasons — which means twice a year, gardeners take this clock apart and grow it again, by hand, plant by plant, so that strangers driving past can glance down and know the time. It would be cheaper in plastic. It would be easier in paint. They chose flowers, and they keep choosing them, seventy-five years on.
We did not stay long — it is a roadside stop, not a destination — but it stayed with us. A clock is the most practical object in the world, and here it is, made of the least practical material there is: things that bloom, fade, and have to be planted again. Time, told by flowers, next to a river that never stops. If that is not a small sermon about how to spend a life — tend it, replant it, keep it beautiful for strangers — we don't know what is.
Hidden gem
The Floral Clock stands on the Niagara Parkway just north of the Sir Adam Beck power stations, about ten minutes' drive from the falls. Parking and viewing are free.
Would return
It fits the same parkway drive as the whirlpool (episode 5) and the chapel (episode 3) — one slow road, three very different kinds of wonder.
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Tell us about your tripAll episodes
- EP 01The Falls From AboveSeven hundred and seventy-five feet up, the whole river finally makes sense — both falls, one bridge, and the gorge running away green below.
- EP 02Standing at the BrinkUp on the tower the river looked calm. Down here at the rail, it is all speed — water shouldering past, and then the edge, and then nothing but mist.
- EP 03The Smallest ChurchTen feet square, six seats, one low door — and a guest book full of travellers who stopped, the way we did, because it was there.
- EP 04A Clock Made of FlowersForty feet across, planted tens of thousands deep, and keeping time since 1950 — somebody has to replant this clock twice a year, and somebody does.
- EP 05The River BendsBelow the falls, the river makes a hard right turn — and the water that misses the turn has been circling in the Whirlpool for four thousand years.