Summer Gardens Weekend at UCV
Candy Pollard

With colourful heirloom plants in full bloom and lush vegetables growing in abundance, Upper Canada Village is in peak form for its “Summer Gardens Day” on Saturday, July 26, 2008. In addition to a practical morning workshop on summer grafting, and a guided garden tour in the afternoon, this year’s event brings a special guest speaker who will give insightful talks about medieval gardens, and how the garden practices of today and the 19th century are connected to this time period.

The day’s activities will begin with a workshop in the Loucks Farm orchard between 9:45 and 11:45 a.m., about “Summer Grafting on Apple and Pear Trees”. Led by the Village’s Lead Horticultural Interpreter, Brian Henderson, this hands-on workshop will introduce visitors to the techniques used for summer “T”-bud grafting, or budding of fruit trees. They will learn how to reproduce or propagate heirloom varieties of apples and pears in order to build their own orchard at home. The workshop will include proper selection of grafting wood and root stock, and the techniques for cutting the buds and inserting them onto the rootstock. Following a demonstration, participants will have the chance to practice using a grafting knife!

For anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of our 19th and 20th century gardening practices, the Village’s special guest, Nicole Derushie, will be at Crysler Hall to share some insight into medieval gardens, their role and contribution to the “sustainability” of medieval society. Nicole will be offering two short talks (approximately 30-45 minutes), each on different aspects of medieval gardens and their historical connections, as follows:

• Sew and Surgery: Gardens and Plants in Medieval Life (1:00 p.m.)
Much like the rural Victorians, who tended their gardens with care, medieval people at all levels of society grew plants that were essential to everyday living. In an age when most people could not buy what they needed in shops, gardens at monasteries, castles, manor houses, and peasants' backyards provided the basics for living. This presentation will discuss the culinary, medicinal, aromatic, and other common uses of plants in the Middle Ages. We will take a look at how we know what we know about gardens that grew over 600 years ago, and how those roots can be seen in gardens of the Victorian era and beyond.

• The Hortus Conclusus: Medieval Pleasure Gardens (2:30 p.m.)
What did monks, kings and commoners have in common in medieval times? All found refuge and refreshment in carefully tended pleasure gardens of every shape and size. In an era beset by plague, overcrowding and political unrest, gardens were treasured as places of escape. This presentation will take a look at the flowers and forms of the medieval pleasure garden, and at the art and literature that inspired (or were inspired) by them. Learn also how you can bring some of these ancient features into your own garden, and reap the same reward as those who lived so very long ago.

Special activities will wrap up with a guided Summer Garden Tour at 3:30 p.m. Led by Village horticultural staff, visitors will be invited to join in a leisurely garden tour highlighting summer-flowering ornamentals, 19th century attitudes and the symbolism associated with different flowers, and the rationales behind the various gardens and choices of plant materials at Upper Canada Village.

Throughout the day, Village horticultural staff also will be working in the various gardens on-site, and will be available to respond to visitor questions about heirloom varieties, weed and pest identification and control, and gardening in general.

www.uppercanadavillage.com

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