In the summer of 1911, a travel writer for Canada’s Saturday Night magazine visited the Heart’s Content cable station on a trip to Newfoundland. “Heart’s Content is a dear little outport, straggling along the shore to where the cable company’s red-roofed house and the fine dwellings of the employees, all red-roofed, and big windows filled with wonderful geraniums in profuse bloom, make a sort of central point…” she wrote.

Over the years the geranium, houseplant of choice for the cable staff, spread to other families around the harbor, as housekeepers brought home slips from the cable houses. It became the popular flower of Heart’s Content. In 2021 we decided to reintroduce geraniums to the local landscape. That summer we did a pilot project and Ted Rowe, Gordon Tavenor and Wallace Rendell distributed 20 pots of geraniums to our first corporate sponsors, donors and other supporters to be placed on display in front of their properties.

Then in 2022 we installed concrete planters of geraniums at strategic locations around the town, and encouraged residents to display geraniums as part of their own plantings during the summer. We displayed photos from everyone who participated and Mayor Piercey drew for special prizes at a reception in July.

The project continued to grow and in 2024 we organized Heart’s Content Blooms, the first annual geraniums-plus flower show at The Wye as part of the Heritage Days celebrations. It’s now an ongoing project and a special feature of summertime in Heart’s Content.