Introduction
Planting the Seeds
Cultivating the Garden
The Cultivators
Reaping the Harvest
Harrowsmith
The New Experts
Their Own Gardens
The Garden in Literature
Gardening from Sea to Sea to Sea
All Kinds of Gardens in All Kinds
of Spaces
Bibliography
Photos by Beth Powning
Other Gardening Sites
Acknowledgements |
Reaping the Harvest: Gardening Today
The Garden in Literature
From novelist Anne Hébert writing about Louis Hébert as the country's first gardener, to Lorna Crozier's raunchy vegetable poems, creative writers have long been fascinated by gardens, as is evident in this small selection from their work.
| "They sowed the first garden with seeds that came from France. They laid out the garden according to the notion of a garden, the memory of a garden, that they carried in their heads, and it was almost indistinguishable from a garden in France, flung into a forest in the New World." [translation] |
Hébert, Anne.
Le Premier Jardin.
Paris: Du Seuil, 1988, p. 77. |
| Carr, on learning the name of one of the beautiful flowering plants in the garden: "Rockets! Beautiful things that tear up into the air and burst!" |
 |
Carr, Emily.
The Book of Small.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 80. |
| Gabrielle Roy, in Un Jardin au bout du monde et autres nouvelles, stumbles upon a beautiful wild prairies garden and the story of Marta, a pioneer Ukrainian settler: "Had I ever, until that moment, seen flowers at all?" [translation] |
|
Roy, Gabrielle.
Un Jardin au bout du monde et autres nouvelles.
Montréal: Beauchemin, 1975, p. 156. |
| Des Kennedy, best known for his gardening advice, creates a fictional garden club on an imaginary island and sends its members off to save the rain forest. |
|
Kennedy, Des.
The Garden Club and the Kumquat Campaign.
Vancouver: Whitecap, 1996. |
| Daisy Goodwill's experiences as the columnist Mrs. Green Thumbs during the 1950s and ‘60s are recounted in a series of letters - just one small episode in this rich, poetic novel. |
|
Shields, Carol.
The Stone Diaries.
Toronto: Random, 1993. |
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