Introduction
Planting the Seeds
Cultivating the Garden
Second-Generation Gardening
Landscape Architecture
Railway Station Gardening
Gardening in the Schools
The Cultivators
Reaping the Harvest
Bibliography
Photos by Beth Powning
Other Gardening Sites
Acknowledgements |
Cultivating the Garden
Railway Station Gardening
Influenced by the social reform ideas of the period, public institutions began to take responsibility for improving the property within their management. For the Canadian Pacific Railway this coincided with the desire to promote the fertility of the prairies, in order to encourage immigration. They started with a simple program in 1908 to provide seeds as an encouragement to station agents to cultivate small gardens on station property. The idea was enthusiastically adopted across the country. A forestry department was established to formalize the program. Greenhouses were built to give plants an early start before they were distributed to the individual stations. Teams of experts crossed the country inspecting the gardens. Other railway lines, not to be outdone, started their own programs. As the station agents gained expertise, it was often they who helped to create local horticultural societies and garden clubs.
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von Baeyer, Edwinna.
Rhetoric and Roses: A History of Canadian Gardening, 1900-1930.
Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1984. |
| "Because western railway stations were often the hub of small towns, representing their only link with the outside world, Department employees soon found themselves dispensing valuable horticultural information to entire communities." |
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Mather, Jan.
Designing Alberta Gardens: The Complete Guide to Beautiful Gardens.
Red Deer, Alta.: Red Deer College, 1994, p. 9. |
| "The pictures selected this month are from points widely separated, showing how general is the movement for beautification of the Company's premises and how well the object is being attained." |
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"Canadian Pacific Station Gardens", Canadian Pacific Staff Bulletin, 129A, October 1, 1919, p. 3. |
| The station garden program in the West, some 38 years after its initiation, was maintained in the smaller centres by "over 1,250 employees who voluntarily maintain gardens on Company property. To them some 10,000 packets of seeds are sent out each season." |
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"Bloom Bloom Along the Right-of-way," Canadian Pacific Staff Bulletin, July 1946, p. 13. |
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