A History of Canadian Gardening

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden-history writer, is
the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden History Directory and
Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing.

In 1998, Carol Martin was curator of an exhibition, “Cultivating
Canadian Gardens,” mounted by the National Library of Canada. The
exhibition featured books and pamphlets from the Library’s own
collections as well as an accompanying text that is still on the
Internet. Realizing the need for a more permanent work, however, Martin
decided to continue her research, expand her original essays, and
include illustrations from collections across the country.

The resulting book begins, as it should, with “Canada’s First
Gardeners”—an enlightening chapter on First Nations’ gathering and
growing practices. Next come explorers discovering indigenous plants and
settlers trying to grow familiar plants under unfamiliar conditions. The
middle chapters chronicle the leisurely pursuits of ornamental
landscaping, the ardent attempts to reform society through gardening,
and the early and ongoing efforts of horticultural societies.

A chapter about experimental farms, arboreta, and botanical gardens is
followed by one about three of the country’s many prominent plant
breeders. The books ends with recent yet recurring phenomena: wartime,
school, and community gardens; back-to-the-land movements; surges of
interest in particular kinds of plants and gardens; and proliferations
of published (and now also electronic) messages urging us to greater
gardening heights.

Martin’s text, moving across time and throughout the country, reveals
a lot about our nation’s history. The illustrations are even more of
an eye-opener. On the cover, for example, is Joseph Légaré’s
painting of his own trim house and well-established ornamental gardens
at Gentilly, Quebec, circa 1853—a marked contrast to the watercolor
sketch on page 52 depicting, some 10 years later, the Allison family’s
first log cabin and new vegetable gardens in Hope, British Columbia. The
book’s title is well chosen because one could tell many histories of
Canadian gardening. This, however, is a first, and a must for any
library.