Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) enjoys a worldwide reputation based on its first-class horticultural collection and natural lands. It is Canada’s largest botanical garden and one of the country’s premier cultural, education and scientific institutions. It has extensive educational programs and serves as an outdoor laboratory for scientific research.

RBG was established as an independent entity in 1941 by an act of the provincial government, but the project traces its origins to the late 1920s when the City of Hamilton began acquiring land for the beautification of the city’s northwest entrance. In the 1920s, under the chairmanship of Thomas Baker McQuesten, the Hamilton Board of Parks Management recognized the need for a counterpart in southwestern Ontario to Canada’s two botanical gardens--the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, and the University of British Columbia Gardens in Vancouver. McQuesten was a student of plant cultivation and garden design and he convinced the Board of Parks Management to include a botanical garden in the redevelopment plan for the city’s northwest entrance.

In the early 1900s, the main road from Toronto to Hamilton was lined with a haphazard assortment of billboards, gas stations and undistinguished dwellings. The open waterway between Hamilton Harbour and the marshy inlet known as Cootes Paradise provided an unpleasant view of papered shacks, boathouses and sundry sheds along the shoreline.

This industrial blight was to be improved upon by the introduction of a parkway, which would run through landscaped gardens over reclaimed Cootes Paradise. A bridge, which opened in 1932, spanned the waterway between Burlington Bay and Cootes Paradise and provided the impetus to launch the Board’s beautification plan. Work began in 1929 to create a picturesque rock garden in an abandoned gravel pit, located at the side of the road leading to the bridge.

That same year work began on the construction of the Hamilton campus of McMaster University, at the west end of Cootes Paradise, and a formal sunken garden was built to serve as the entrance to both the university and the western end of the gardens. The Board of Parks Management established a Botanical Garden Section within the beautification project and in 1930 McQuesten obtained Royal assent to name the 162-hectare (400-acre) site "Royal Botanical Gardens".

The Board of Parks Management subsequently received the Hendrie Valley Farm, 49 hectares (122 acres) of sloping woodland and broad valley running north from Burlington Bay, as a gift from George M. Hendrie. By 1932 the original RBG lands were combined with the northwest entrance, including the Rock Gardens and the Hendrie Valley Farm, and together became known as Royal Botanical Gardens.

This radically altered the original concept of the Gardens, changing it from the traditional closed and cultivated preserve, where the world is represented in microcosm, to one that encompassed the larger natural world. Most modern botanical gardens have evolved to combine scientific, educational, aesthetic and recreational objectives.

Royal Botanical Gardens is an accurate reflection of this evolution.

McQuesten later became Minister of Highways and Public Works in the Ontario government. By 1941, when he initiated establishment of the Gardens as an entity separate from the Board of Parks Management, RBG had grown to 486 hectares (1,200 acres). In the late 1940s, the land base of the Gardens had grown to almost 809 hectares (2,000 acres) at the western end of Lake Ontario. With the subsequent addition of another 162 hectares (400 acres) on the north shore of Cootes Paradise and the inclusion of land across from the Hendrie Valley Farm, the configuration of Royal Botanical Gardens as it exists today had emerged.

Following the end of the Second World War and completion of the major land acquisition, the Gardens were formally laid out under the direction of Carl Borgstrom. He was influenced by American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, who was concerned with environmental conservation. Borgstrom’s recommendations called for great swatches of colours and textures for all seasons. Much of Royal Botanical Gardens’ present-day physical attraction is attributable to Borgstrom’s ideas.

In 1958, the building opposite the Hendrie property was opened as a public centre and focal point. It has provided space for a library, auditorium, workshop and herbarium over the subsequent years.

Of the Gardens’ 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres), about 120 hectares (297 acres) are cultivated, while the rest remains a managed natural area. The glory of the Arboretum is the Katie Osborne Lilac Garden, which boasts the world’s largest living collection of lilacs.

The Mediterranean Garden, opened in 1986, complements RBG’s outdoor collection because its plants require hot, arid summers and cool damp winters. They are at their best during February and March, when the outdoor gardens are dormant.

The nature sanctuaries consist of marshland, woodland, meadow, Niagara Escarpment and agricultural land with emphasis on ecosystem management. The 30-kilometre (18-mile) trail system makes the varied habitats accessible to the public.

The Cootes Paradise Sanctuary is the Gardens’ natural treasure. Ecosystems within the 250-hectare (620-acre) marsh, at the westernmost tip of Lake Ontario, have been devastated by invasive fish and plant species, as well as human intervention.

The largest fresh-water marsh restoration project of its kind in North America is helping to bring Cootes Paradise back to its former glory. The operation of a innovative fish barrier has reduced dramatically the population of harmful carp, and has promoted the return of beneficial species to the marsh.

The Nature Interpretive Centre, at the Arboretum, introduces the general public to the geology, history, wildlife and restoration of the natural area and Cootes Paradise. RBG runs public and school interpretive programs from the Centre to illustrate the diversity of life in the Hendrie Valley and that section of the Niagara Escarpment known as the Rock Chapel Sanctuary.

Royal Botanical Gardens is the only Canadian botanical garden to have maintained consistent growth and development. Moreover, it is the result of the joint effort of talented landscape architects, botanists and plan curators, thereby reflecting a historical and aesthetic character that is distinct in Canada.




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