Tour of Lansdowne Park's Ethno-Botanic and Demonstration Gardens

As part of Lansdowne Park redevelopment in 2015, 25 raised beds were created near the Horticulture Building. Seven were planted with native plants of significance to the Algonquin Aboriginal community. The remaining 18 are intended to highlight food production, Ottawa’s horticultural heritage, and a sampling of other garden experiences that exist in Ottawa like the Fletcher Wildlife Garden.

Various themes and designs were adopted for each bed. There is a Peter Rabbit bed for children, a square-foot-gardening bed, a sunflower bed, plants for natural dying of fabric and fibers, a bed of new annual and perennial varieties, a fairy garden, an Ottawa Festivals bed, and 4 beds have been combined into one design as a potager. One bed is representative of the school gardening movement in the early 1900s and another contains heritage tomatoes and basil. Two beds are dedicated to heirloom vegetables used in the vacant-lot gardening movement of 1917 during the first world war, and two beds are planted with newer more unusual vegetable developed more recently. One bed is designed as a pollinator garden.

One overarching theme of the garden is to grow food and flowers together to encourage food production. We highlight colourful vegetable varieties and edible flowers. The side benefit of growing both vegetables and flowers is that the garden attracts a large variety of pollinators and birds and demonstrates that a wide diversity of plants can be grown in raised beds. All produce is harvested and donated to the local food bank.