Why Grow Here: Essays on Edmonton’s Gardening History by Kathryn Chase Merrett (review)

Ever wonder why we bother to plant petunias or defend our gardens from the ravages of weather, insects, and disease—or why we don’t just pave it? Some say we need contact with nature, to participate in ageless, seasonal rhythms. But could it also be an unconscious desire to show kinship with generations of gardeners who created North America’s rich horticultural past?

Kathryn Chase Merrett certainly hints at this in these well-written, meticulously researched stand-alone essays that illustrate the long history of what she calls horticultural optimism in Edmonton, Alberta, on the Great Plains’ northern edge. She interweaves major horticultural activities and the people who made Edmonton a garden city: from pioneer experimenter Alfred Pike to passionate hybridist Robert Simonet and horticultural activist Gladys Reeves.

Merrett traces a common North American horticultural story: a new settlement concentrates on survival and subsistence first, then slowly on beautification, as civic-minded people by example and charisma entice others to join with them to be, as Merrett calls them, “agents of social change.”

Merrett explains how the Prairies were part of the nation-building vision of William Saunders, first director of Canada’s influential Experimental Farms System. He urged plant breeders to create hardy edible and ornamental plants that would push horticultural borders ever northward. Merrett skillfully presents the fluid interplay among governments, academia, commercial interests, the media, and individuals working to achieve this goal.

The late 19th-and early 20th-century City Beautiful movement found many champions in Edmonton. To bring this movement to life, which one keen beautifier called “a crusade against ugliness,” Merrett focuses on the leaders who formed and led the Edmonton Horticultural Society. She follows them planning and creating public parks and public plantings near town centers, railway lines, schoolhouses and post offices, transforming backyard ash heaps into lawn and flowers, and cultivating vacant debris-strewn lots. Merrett then brings us up to present day with descriptions of current beautification and urban agricultural programs.

What makes Edmonton’s story a bit different? I think it is the passionate plant breeders (almost a who’s who of northern hybridists) who made it their life’s mission to create hardy roses to make Edmonton the “city of roses.” Theirs is a tale of dogged perseverance, which for Georges Bugnet paid off in his creation of the “Thérèse Bugnet” rose, still grown in northern gardens.

As well, Merrett puts a face on a group of gardeners who are often invisible in many horticultural histories—immigrant market gardeners. Through in-depth interviews with their descendants, she highlights in amazing detail the stories of Edmonton’s early Chinese market gardeners.

Merrett ends by praising citizen gardeners who have influenced, and continue to affect, our urban landscapes. As she notes, these Edmontonians did not view the garden as a private refuge from the world, but as a model for action in it—carried on by a new generation of activist gardeners, reflecting our ongoing interest in nature and the environment, and our enjoyment of the beautiful.