Botanical gardens fill visitors with wonder. They are dramatic, and to people of all ages and abilities, botanical gardens are sources of sensory and intellectual elation. Botanical gardens encourage exploration and through creative landscape design surprise you with botanical delights around each corner.
Botanical gardens are also living museums and provide a forum to educate visitors on the life of plants. People and all animals on the planet depend on plants. From sunlight, plants make their own food and produce the oxygen we breathe. With plants, people have made houses, clothing, paper and baseball bats. From coffee and cocoa to the grains fed to livestock, all our foods are plant-based. In the sea, plants form coral reefs. Hundreds of medicines and many pesticides are derived from plants. Plants can move, respond to touch and some catch and eat insects. Given a millennium, the elements of plants and animals become crude oil and diamonds.
Botanical gardens have great social value. They can heal mind and body while lifting one’s spirit. Many botanical gardens have weathered times of tragic world events and provided a public haven. In general, visitors to North American botanical gardens increased after the horrific events of September 11th as we sought peace and beauty.
A botanical garden for Toronto makes sense.
A Toronto Botanical Garden would contribute to the urban economy. In cities around the world, botanical gardens are a significant magnet for tourism. Alongside other tourist draws a Toronto Botanical Garden would provide benefits to the hospitality and other service sectors. These financial gains, plus employment and on-the-job apprenticeship training, would have wide geopolitical benefits to wards throughout the city.
A Toronto Botanical Garden would advance Toronto’s botanical heritage, and integrate our many lovely gardens and parks into a coherent series of horticultural landmarks.
In a city as culturally rich as Toronto, the language of plants is one that people from many backgrounds speak. Gardens will be filled with plants native to areas around the world, and would coexist alongside native Ontario species. There would be multicultural education, multigenerational programs, community outreach, all while demonstrating environmental leadership such as water-wise gardening practices. Trial gardens would test the hardiness of new plants as a prelude to introducing them into the horticultural marketplace.
Arts and culture would blend with beautiful gardens. Sculptures and floral art forms would dot the landscape, while musical concerts captivate audiences during the spring and summer.
The Toronto Botanical Garden is envisaged at historic Edwards Gardens. This 12-hectare city park is ideally suited to growing Toronto’s first Botanical Garden. Edwards Gardens already has an extensive collection of Magnolias and rhododendron, complemented by roses, perennials, an assortment of conifers and trees and a rock garden.
Located at Toronto’s geographical centre with easy highway access, Edwards Gardens features the meandering Wilket Creek (with footbridges that are the focal point of many wedding photographs), flat tableland, ravine, wetland and woodland. The infrastructure of paths, service buildings, parking lot and fresh water supply supports the park.
Sharing the grounds is The Civic Garden Centre, Ontario’s volunteer-based horticultural education and information centre. The meeting place for dozens of horticultural societies and gardening clubs, while offering public programs in gardening, floral arts, nature, a children’s Teaching Garden and specialty library, The Civic Garden Centre is a hub of year-round activity.
I submit then, that a Toronto Botanical Garden be developed at Edwards Gardens as a partnership between the City of Toronto (Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Department, Parks and Recreation Division) and The Civic Garden Centre, with support from the horticultural community and professional landscape organizations.
Leadership is paramount. The Toronto Botanical Garden ought to be spearheaded by The Civic Garden Centre. Commitment from community and corporate leaders with influence and affluence and strong political advocates are crucial. The establishment of a Toronto Botanical Garden has garnered widespread support from the general public, city staff, horticultural groups, businesses, political sectors, The Civic Garden Centre Board of Directors and its members.
What is required is an action plan, including a business plan and dialogue leading to a lease between the City of Toronto and The Civic Garden Centre.
Through revenue from membership, programs, special events, admissions and an endowment, the Toronto Botanical Garden would have a financially sound and sustainable management without being a burden to the city. These revenue forms would be strongly complemented by private sector funding. This means committed philanthropic people and foundations must share this vision, understand the importance of a botanical garden to a thriving society, and agree with the sense of establishing a Toronto Botanical Garden.
All the ingredients are here. Demographic data indicates visitation to botanical gardens will continue for generations. People clamor for new vistas and new experiences. People love gardens and nature. A Toronto Botanical Garden would provide this and more, while making Toronto a better place to live and visit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The principal proponent for a Toronto Botanical Garden, Douglas Markoff is a professional horticulturist and the former executive director of The Civic Garden Centre. He can be reached at markoff@total.net.