Our pansies came west with the railways
By Prof. Ted McLachlan, Landscape Architecture, University of Manitoba
A typical railway garden. T
en years ago I spent a wonder- ful month driving the prairies, retracing old abandoned railway
lines and visiting over 300 former rail- way gardens. At each one I would stop to root around amongst the long grass and ancient caragana hedges, coming across patches of peonies, rhubarb and Maltese cross. Through such artifacts I could begin
to read the history of the place and its people. In still thriving towns, I would stop for coffee and note, for instance, that the implement dealership at the end of Main Street was surrounded by a mature stand of spruce trees. Questions would always arise. Why was it there? What is the history
of this landscape? The prairie railway garden is one of the long forgotten influences on both
42 • Fall 2016
the public landscape and our home and farm gardens. These gardens persisted in one form or another for 70 years, playing a pivotal role in the evolution of open space in small towns on the Cana- dian prairies. Still, to this day, the only park space in many small towns is locat- ed on the site of the former gardens. In the cities, the railway gardens with
their lavish geometric display of flowers set the style and with it public expecta- tions for early public parks. David Hysop, an influential farmer
from the Killarney area in Manitoba as well as a CPR claims adjuster, played a key role in getting the CPR railway gardens established. In the 1880s, he wrote a letter to
William Whyte, CPR’s superintendent of western lines, with this suggestion: if you want to show how good the soil
is, why not have gardens at the railway stations in which flowers and vegeta- bles can be grown? The company can supply the seeds, the station agents and the section foreman can look after the gardens and, if water is needed, the locomotives can supply it and it can be kept in barrels along the track. The vegetables and flowers can be used in the dining cars and shown at fairs far and wide. Not only was the suggestion acted
upon, Hysop was later appointed super- intendent of 44 gardens from Brandon to Golden, B.C. In his letter Hysop linked his proposal to one of the rail- way’s most pressing economic concerns, that of selling its land and filling the West with customers. With the trans- continental rail line complete, the coun- try had a pressing need to fill in the
localgardener.net
Photo provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway Archives #2468.
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