'It's really connected everybody': Winnipegger creates eye-catching rock garden to spread kindness

Happy Tree Kindness Rock Garden A rock garden in Winnipeg is all part of a project to spread joy in the city.

A Winnipeg woman has transformed her front yard into a colourful rock garden engineered to make passersby a little bit happier.

Nancy-Tina Coutu created the Happy Tree Kindness Rock Garden in the front yard of her Maples home.

She started the project at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 as a way to bring a bit of joy to her neighbourhood during an otherwise scary time.

“If I’m feeling blue, I go and do something nice for somebody else so that then it picks me up,” she said. “That sounds very transactional but when you do for others, it puts everything into perspective properly.”

She started by placing emoji plush toys in her trees for kids in the neighbourhood to enjoy.

It snowballed from there.

She added hand-painted rocks with kind messages around the trees and signs offering words of encouragement for staff at the nearby Seven Oaks Hospital to see on their way to work.

When Canada Day festivities were cancelled in 2020, Coutu put out an online call for others to contribute to her garden or take a rock home.

She was inspired by the Kindness Rocks Project – a global movement started in 2015 by a Cape Cod woman. It encourages people to leave rocks painted with inspiring messages along the path of life for others to collect in their travels.

“That was when I really set out to make it an inspiration garden, a kindness garden,” she recalled.

By the end of 2020, Coutu had inspired about 45 other Manitoba rock gardens.

Today, the garden continues to transform. Coutu has added an Oz-inspired yellow brick road to transport visitors to her technicolour world of kindness and a bench for them to sit a while and enjoy.

Her garden has become a meeting place for the neighbourhood.

“It’s really connected everybody. It’s really brought everybody together.”

Anybody looking to visit Coutu’s rock garden or tour the many others throughout Manitoba can visit the Winnipeg Kindness Rock Gardens’ Facebook page.

- With files from CTV's Scott Andersson