It’s a myth of legends: Who is behind the several smiley face daffodils planted around Waterloo Region?
For decades, the person has been lovingly called the “Unknown Gardner,” hiding his identity and bringing joy to people in the spring. But now, 570 NewsRadio has been contacted by a man who says he’s behind the flowers and wants to come clean.
“I put my first one (daffodil smile) in, the fall of 2008, and it went on the side of a road where easy access via a walkway was. We jumped over a fence,” Dave McDougall said in an interview.
The group of 10 people, plus him, divided the land up like a clock and planted the flowers in rows of two. According to McDougall, the group did 600 bulbs in about 20 minutes. About nine of the smiley face patterns continued to appear in the years after 2008, he said, but only about three to four are still around.
In a previous story reported, Jocelyn Schaefer said she was told by her father that he and his class from Bluevale Collegiate were behind the smile at the University Avenue East exit. McDougall says there are other daffodils in the area that were likely Schaefer’s father’s, but not in the form of a smiley.
“His daffodils are still there, still really, really vibrant, and I wish I knew what kind he planted because they’re far better than the ones that I did,” McDougall said.
Schaefer weighed in on the ongoing story, telling 570 NewsRadio she acknowledges that she only had the information provided by her father, and she appreciates learning about the history of the daffodil smiles.
But why is McDougall breaking his silence after decades of anonymity?
At the time when he started planting the flowers, he said it “was not about me.”
“It’s about other people, and it’s about the joy that they get. So no one needs to take credit for it. And it’s supposed to be something that’s done just for the sake of being nice,” he said.
Instead, the mystery continued to grow and stories started merging with truth and rumours, which prompted McDougall to put the tale to rest.
“I thought it was kind of cute and fun that there was an urban myth that I started, but at this stage of the game, I think people of Kitchener-Waterloo deserve to know the truth,” he said.
