Planting the Seeds

Planting the Seeds

Pioneer Gardening

One of the few early French-language books on gardening was by the noted naturalist Abbé Léon Provancher. In this small volume he gives useful advice on growing fruits, vegetables and flowers. As he notes in the preface, there was no shortage of gardening books in French, but none specific to the climate and resources of Quebec.
	Provancher, Abbé Léon. Le Verger, le potager et le parterrre dans la province de Québec. Québec: Darveau, 1874.

The walled garden at the St. Sulpician Seminary on Notre Dame Street in Montreal, dating from the 1680s, is the oldest garden existing in Canada and typical of those introduced into New France by the monastic orders.

(© 8)

The United Empire Loyalists who arrived from the United States in the 1780s and 1790s brought with them seeds, plants and trees, as well as more sophisticated methods of cultivation.
(© 9)	Major, Marjorie. From the Ground: The Story of Planting in Nova Scotia. Halifax: Petheric, 1981.

Much of our detailed knowledge of the day-to-day life of pioneers in Upper Canada comes from the books and letters written by sisters, Catharine Parr Traill (whose writing on Canadian wild flowers is included in the Canadian Flora section) and Susanna Moodie (best known for Roughing It in the Bush). In The Backwoods of Canada, Traill describes her early years in the Peterborough area. She and her husband arrived in 1832. Their first tasks were to clear the land, fence it, build a house, dig a well and construct a root cellar. By 1834, however, they had established a garden and were growing peas, beans, lettuce, cabbage and root crops, surprised that everything grew so quickly in the short season.

Traill, Catharine Parr. The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America. London: Knight, 1836.

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