If you have a desire to travel in the last remaining weeks of summer or want to satisfy your wanderlust in the coming fall months, the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa is one of the best places to visit. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * If you have a desire to travel in the last remaining weeks of summer or want to satisfy your wanderlust in the coming fall months, the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa is one of the best places to visit. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? If you have a desire to travel in the last remaining weeks of summer or want to satisfy your wanderlust in the coming fall months, the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa is one of the best places to visit.
It’s a must-see destination for anyone interested in plants of all kinds – trees, shrubs, roses, lilies, peonies, lilacs, irises, chrysanthemums, annuals, and tropical plants. But the farm is also a magnet for people around the world who come for the history, architecture, horticulture, arboriculture, research, beauty, and cultural connectivity. It’s not possible to encapsulate in a few paragraphs what might be the biggest draw for visitors to the Central Experimental Farm so let’s start with what it is not: a park.
This national historic site which was established in 1886 by the Canadian government and sits on 426 hectares of land has the serene beauty comparable to any of our country’s most beautiful parks, but it is much more than a park. “For the last 137 years, the city of Ottawa has grown around the Central Experimental Farm,” says Jeremy DiZazzo, chief of grounds maintenance for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. “The original inception was extremely holistic — it was there to be able to exchange information as a collective resource for the challenges of farmers across the country.
” It was the largest of five experimental stations that were set up across Canada at the time. “It was the concept of William Saunders who was the first director of CEF, to incorporate agriculture, horticulture, architecture, and beautification,” says DiZazzo. At the time, many Canadians lived on farms.
CEF was a resource to aid Canadians in homesteading, nourishment, and sustainability. “We have barns here that are quite aged but that were intentionally built as the first modular or kit farms. Agriculture Canada published the designs and made the blueprints free to the public,” says DiZazzo.
Canadians could access information about which poultry selections would be best for a particular area or which fruit tree or variety of potato would thrive and survive in our cold climate. The Dominion Arboretum is a must-see. An unparalleled collection of several thousand varieties of trees and shrubs, the Dominion Arboretum covers about 35 hectares or 86 acres.
On my visit in the month of October, the fall colour was spectacular. “The arboretum is one of the elements of the Farm’s creation,” says DiZazzo. “William Saunders and his counterparts planted the first 200 trees in 1889.
“When I am standing beside some of these trees that were planted in the 1880s,” he says, “I put myself in the perspective of how many people have done what I am doing, how many people these trees have impacted personally, and it is honestly overwhelming and quite truthfully humbling because it is more than a century in this one spot — planted roots — and all of this change that is moving around it.” The arboretum is also home to the Hosta Garden which features around 300 different species of hosta, more than 600 plants in all. The Ornamental Gardens were also started by William Saunders who planted the first roses and published a list of desirable roses in 1895.
“The original inception of the Ornamental Gardens was an attempt to beautify individual landscapes, the homesteading kind of mentality and how you can beautify your home landscape while also being functional whether it be sustenance by planting fruit trees or biodiversity by planting companion plants.” The Heritage Rose Garden, located within the Ornamental Gardens, represents the history of rose breeding at the Central Experimental Farm. Two notable rose varieties that are still popular today include Rosa Agnes, bred by William Saunders, and Rosa Carmenetta, which was bred by Isabella Preston.
The Ornamental Gardens make horticultural history come alive because here is where you will find plants that were developed by Canada’s foremost plant breeders and hybridizers – individuals such as Felicitas Svejda, Arthur Percy Saunders, Frank L. Skinner, and many more. The lilac and peony collection is like none other.
There are French hybrid lilacs — over 80 Lemoine cultivars, many of which came directly from the famed Lemoine Nursery in France — as well as Hungarian and Asian lilacs and numerous cultivars developed by Frank Skinner and Isabella Preston. There are more than 500 peonies including varieties developed by Percy Saunders, considered one of the greatest peony breeders of all time. In addition to the arboretum and ornamental gardens, there is also the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, a woodland which maintains wild and cultured landscapes.
“We have different microclimates and microcosms of species that have been implemented with significant thought,” says DiZazzo. There is also an extraordinary tropical greenhouse, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, and the Merivale Shelterbelt. There are historic structures to marvel at such as the cereal crops building which was built before 1890.
The shady rock garden with its meandering stone pathways and natural water features is one of those cool, quiet places that make you want to slow down your step and have it all to yourself. Another of my favourite places is the Macoun Memorial Garden. Officially opened in 1936, it is named after William Tyrell Macoun, Dominion Horticulturist at the Central Experimental Farm from 1910 to 1933.
On my visit during the third week of October, the Macoun Memorial Garden was still brimming with colourful flowering plants. The mandate of the Central Experimental Farm has changed dramatically over the years, says DiZazzo, but continuing to grow and maintain the vast plant collections, testing plant varieties, recording and preserving data, providing solutions to pest and disease problems, and researching and exchanging information with the public remains at the heart of what the Central Experimental Farm does. “We are this large research centre in a very quickly developing area,” says DiZazzo.
“There is the need to develop measures to mitigate the food production and food sustainability for the future. Agriculture Canada’s entomologists set up traps in our trees, pathogens are studied, pollinators are assessed, and we have soil samplers come in and do soil tests on all the different soil types we have here.” One of the initial mandates was to push the boundaries of what could be grown in our climate zones, says DiZazzo.
“We continue to push the boundaries as far as hardiness and diversity of species goes.” Monday mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. Central Experimental Farm is Canada’s garden, says DiZazzo, “It is literally a surface that can be scratched and explored endlessly and infinitely.
The aspects of potential enjoyment are limitless, and it all comes down to the individual visitor’s area of interest.” The Friends of the Central Experimental Farm is a volunteer organization that helps to care for and maintain the public areas at this magnificent site. They also host an annual plant sale.
So why not pique your interest? Visit www.friendsofthefarm.ca for a list of the extensive plant collections at the Central Experimental Farm, including information about the location of trees and shrubs.
Shop the online Boutique and order a copy of by Richard Hinchcliff (Sanderling Press, 2016). Let me know if you decide to visit Canada’s garden. It’s a special place.
[email protected] Colleen Zacharias writes about many aspects of gardening including trends, plant recommendations, and how-to information that is uniquely relevant to Prairie gardeners. She has written a column for the since 2010 and pens the monthly newsletter .
. Every piece of reporting Colleen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and .
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism.
Thank you for your support. Colleen Zacharias writes about many aspects of gardening including trends, plant recommendations, and how-to information that is uniquely relevant to Prairie gardeners. She has written a column for the since 2010 and pens the monthly newsletter .
. Every piece of reporting Colleen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and .
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism.
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