Depiction of the west side of Main Street, Winnipeg, 1881.
The Brandon Horticultural and Western Forestry Association, the oldest surviving horticultural society on the prairies, was founded in 1893.
ing aesthetic enhancement, protection of their farmsteads from wind and for psycho- logical security.
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Tree culture also enabled the creation farmstead microclimates within which
gardens could flourish. Among the earliest groups to plant trees were Mennonites from Ukraine who settled in southern Manitoba after 1874. These newcomers established ag- ricultural street villages, which they lined with cottonwoods transplanted from nearby river banks. In so doing they demonstrated the vi- ability of tree culture in areas of open prairie. By 1883 Manitoba’s 9,077 farmers were cul- tivating 120,000 hectares of land, of which 1,400 hectares were devoted to gardens and orchards. The importance of tree culture was officially recognized with the proclamation of Arbor Day in the North-West Territories in 1884, followed by Manitoba in 1886.
Homesteading
In the homesteading era, vegetable gar- dens were important sources of food to set- tling farm families while they developed their homesteads into grain, mixed or stock farms. They were also of economic importance as settlers often sold root crops to local markets to generate cash prior to the establishment of an export wheat economy. Well before the appearance of horticultural societies, vegetable and flower culture was promoted in rural areas through competitions and displays of produce in local agricultural fairs and exhibitions. At these events farm women and men informally shared their knowledge of experiments with assorted species and varieties. Women also disseminated their findings more widely through letters to farm periodicals such as the Nor’-West Farmer, the Farmers’ Advocate (Western Edition), and the Grain Growers’ Guide.
Advocating for growth
During the 1880s there were a number of early attempts to organize horticultural groups in the west. In 1883, at the sugges- tion of Rev. W. A. Burman of Griswold, the Manitoba Board of Agriculture formed the Manitoba Forestry and Horticulture Society.
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berta, the society continued under the name of the Manitoba Horticultural and Forestry Association. The Association provided ag- gressive leadership in the field for the balance of the settlement era. Expanding the annual report to a monthly publication in 1914, it hosted a series of flower shows, including a huge exhibition in 1902 featuring 2,000 exhibits. It also distributed hardy fruit and ornamental varieties and annually published a revised list of recommended trees, shrubs, fruits and vines. The Manitoba government assisted through financial grants to the soci- ety’s various publications. Alongside their provincial counterparts, lo-
Dandelions were imported by Europeans who used the plant for food.
Its first objective was to establish a botanical garden as a “convincing ground” for dem- onstrating the west’s horticultural potential. The society died in infancy but the follow- ing year Winnipeg residents formed another organization to exhibit fruits, vegetables and flowers. In 1887 a Manitoba Floral As- sociation sponsored a flower show, but this group, like its other early counterparts, soon disbanded.
Market gardeners and hort societies By the 1890s the development of a core of market gardeners, nursery owners, and professional horticulturists at the Dominion experimental farms provided a more promis- ing base for organizational activity. In 1895 Winnipeg-area market gardeners initiated the Manitoba Horticultural Society, which amateurs were soon also invited to join. The members, deciding to broaden the or- ganization’s scope, changed its name to the Western Horticultural Society in 1898. The society’s ambitious objective was to promote horticulture across the prairie region. To this end, annual meetings were convened at which papers on a wide variety of horti- cultural topics were read and subsequently published.
In 1905, after the organization of the western provinces of Saskatchewan and Al-
cal associations also played a role in promot- ing horticulture. The Brandon Horticultural and Western Forestry Association, the oldest surviving horticultural society on the prairies, was founded in 1893.
Commercial gardening industry impacts
The commercial garden industry also pro- vided an important stimulus to horticulture in the period. On the outskirts of major cities market gardens were established to provide produce for the west’s burgeoning urban population. Winnipeg’s early market gardeners included Victor Mager, who was operating a commercial garden by 1873 and J. P. Haarsma, who arrived in 1880. By the 1920s hundreds of market gardeners, many of Polish or Ukrainian origin, were operating between Winnipeg and Selkirk. In addition to producing for local markets, the commercial gardeners aided horticultural development by testing vegetable varieties provided by the experimental farms and agri- cultural colleges. Some gardeners developed their own strains and showed prize-winning produce at local and even international shows. For example, Klaas de Jong, a Win- nipeg-area gardener, won the United States cauliflower contest at Cleveland in 1926. The Winnipeg gardeners also found markets for their root crops and cabbages in the United States and the other prairie provinces, a development that retarded commercial gar- dening in Saskatchewan.
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Image courtesy of University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections.
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