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    Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie
    Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie
    Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie

    By Pat Anderson

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    About this ebook

    Plant a mid-Victorian garden! In search of some old heritage fruits and vegetables? Maybe it would help to have the names of a few roses, or dahlias, or phlox that were grown back in those days.

    George Leslie advertised in Toronto in 1869 that he had the largest Nurseries in the British Empire, occupying over 150 acres. One of the early members of Toronto's Horticulture Society, George Leslie and Sons Nurseries provided planting material for market gardeners and gentry alike.

    For the first time since Victorian times, here is his gardening advice for planting fruit trees, grapes, roses and phlox, and compiled lists of over 1000 trees and plants he sold (he carried over 100 apple varieties, 88 pear varieties, and 120 different roses), This information has been compiled from two catalogues, dated 1853 and 1860. This book provides modern Ontario sources for some of these heritage varieties, where the author has been able to find them, as well as links to websites providing information about heritage apples and other notes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPat Anderson
    Release dateFeb 28, 2012
    ISBN9781465875297
    Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie
    Author

    Pat Anderson

    I am a writer and photographer based in Toronto. My main areas of interest are urban nature, gardening, and field-to-table food. A graduate of the University of Waterloo in English, I have been a technical writer and editor for over 20 years; I also hold a Horticulture 1 certificate from the University of Guelph, and am currently studying Food & Product Photography at George Brown College.

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      Book preview

      Pioneer Gardening in Toronto - Pat Anderson

      Pioneer Gardening in Toronto: the trees, plants, & lore of George Leslie

      by Pat Anderson

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 Pat Anderson

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Chapter 1: George Leslie’s Lore and Wisdom

      His catalogue introduction

      Hints for properly transplanting trees

      Gardening advice for different fruit trees and plants

      Gardening advice for Hedges and flowering plants

      Chapter 2: Fruit and Vegetables

      Fruit trees

      Minor fruits

      Miscellaneous edible trees

      Vegetables

      Chapter 3: Trees, Shrubs & Hedges

      Deciduous Ornamental Trees

      Weeping Trees

      Evergreen Trees & Shrubs

      Deciduous Flowering Shrubs

      Climbing Shrubs

      Hedge Plants

      Chapter 4: The Flower Garden

      Select Roses

      Dahlias

      Peonies

      Phloxes

      Miscellaneous Florists Flowers

      Bedding-out Plants

      Bulbous Flower Roots

      Plants for Edging Walk

      Select List of Hardy Herbaceous Perennial Flowering Plants

      Greenhouse Plants

      Stocks for Nurserymen

      Chapter 5: Online Nursery Links

      Glossary of Terms

      About the Author

      Preface

      My search for the plants George Leslie & Sons Nurseries were selling began shortly after I moved to Leslieville, when I learned that my house was one of the earlier ones built on his land. I wanted to plant some heritage perennials, shrubs, and annuals -- especially ones that people were growing here in Toronto in the 1890’s, possibly even from the George Leslie and sons Nurseries.

      Searches at my local library and Toronto Archives, while they yielded information about the history of the area, weren't able to tell me much about what plants were grown at the largest nurseries in the British Empire, as George advertised them. What did people grow in their flower gardens, their vegetable beds? What fruits did they grow and preserve?

      Over time, I kept checking things out -- a horticulture specialist in Niagara mentioned on a Master Gardener forum that a book had been published. I bought it. Alas, it was about The Toronto Nurseries that existed on the west side of town back in the 1820’s, not the one I was looking for. Online searches, trips to antiquarians, rare book dealers, ephemera shows: none of them yielded information. A trip to the Baldwin Room of early Canadian papers at the Toronto Reference Library resulted in a single find of a business card filed under George Leslie's name.

      My search lay dormant for a few years after that, until this past fall, when I learned that Joanne Doucette would be giving a lecture about George Leslie's history. I attended her talk, and discovered that I had been in the right place but searching under the wrong subject. Back to the Baldwin Room. This time, I looked up The Toronto Nurseries. It turned up a print of the supplemental catalogue, as Joanne said it would. Further electronic searching revealed a microfiche version of another catalogue. The larger catalogue was published in 1853 for the 1854 growing season. The supplemental catalogue dates to 1860, according to the library. I have combined the plant lists from both catalogues to reduce duplication yet ensure a complete listing. The Toronto Nurseries grew substantially between the publication of the two catalogues; in 1853, Leslie stated that his nurseries were 70 acres; by 1860, he noted in the abridged catalogue Our Nurseries now extend over 165 acres. The Stock will be found extensive, varied, vigorous and suitable to the climate. Particular attention is drawn to the Stock of Ornamental Trees and Flowering Shrubs, which is very large and of first quality.

      Many thanks to Joanne Doucette for pointing me in the right direction. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Eileen Woodhead, whose Early Canadian Gardening: An 1827 Nursery Catalogue is a delight of historical research and clear writing. I wish I had had the opportunity to meet her in life.

      As we lead in to another century -- one even faster and less certain than the last, many people yearn for a simpler time.

      Sometimes we can recreate that feeling by gardening. It certainly has a different time span than our hectic modern lives, and although you can force bulbs, you can’t make many plants hurry up, so you have to live by their schedule. There’s something very satisfying, after weeding, watering, and tending to plants, of harvesting a fruit or vegetable, or bringing in a bouquet of flowers, dewy in the early morning.

      Now that Toronto has banned the non-essential use of pesticides, there may be something we can learn from earlier times about sustainable gardening. More information is online all the time: Google has now digitized a number of gardening books from

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