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Langley nurse wins yard makeover in contest for frontline workers

The free yardwork helped relieve some of the stress for a Willoughby nurse and mom
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Para Space Landscaping spent a day fixing up the yard of nurse Nizbeth Ali as part of its contest to honour frontline workers. (Para Space Landscaping/Special to the Langley Advance Times)

Nizbeth Ali is a Langley Memorial Hospital nurse who is also homeschooling her children.

Life during a pandemic isn’t leaving her much time to worry about the yard.

Burnaby-based Para Space Landscaping recently stepped up to help her and six other frontline families with their yard work.

“They did an amazing work putting new grass on my front lawn, cleaned up my front garden and added edging to it. They also pruned trees around the house that needed it. It took them about eight hours or so,” the Willoughby resident said.

The company announced the contest recently on social media as its way to help frontline workers.

“I was very excited to have the chance to work on this project,” said project manager Emerson Dico-Jekot. “With the recent demands and expectations for all types of frontline workers, many of us on the team felt the need to give back in any way we could. Since landscaping can be quite demanding physically, as well as a large time commitment, we thought it would be a great area to provide relief to those dedicated frontline workers.”

Para Space allowed friends and family to nominate frontline workers.

“We reached out to everybody who was nominated,” explained Para’s marketing coordinator Catherine Deacon.

Of the nominees, seven were able to work with Para Space to have the free work completed.

“Their kind gesture is much appreciated and it definitely made me feel appreciated of what I do as a nurse,” Ali said.

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Most of the projects were able to be completed in one day and ranged in size right up to full-yard spruce ups. They wrangled unruly shrubbery, cleaned up weeds, pruned trees and bushes, and helped provide peaceful greenspace for the frontline workers.

“The smallest one we did was somebody’s deck,” she said.

The company spent between $750 and $1,000 on materials.

“It made a huge difference as I had been wanting to work on my yard but never got the time since my husband and I both work full time and trying to homeschool my eldest along with my youngest,” Ali said. “They were both home since March as we were not sending them them to daycare or to grandparents for babysitting due to my high risk work since I work at the hospital. They simply made things a little easier by alleviating some stress of not being being able to maintain our yard.”


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Heather Colpitts

About the Author: Heather Colpitts

Since starting in the news industry in 1992, my passion for sharing stories has taken me around Western Canada.
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