As I write this, the trees are ablaze with colour and I appreciate anew what a wonderful time it is to be in Canada, especially here in the east and if one is able to get out and about in the countryside. But gardens are fading and we all know what is around the corner … winter!

And in these days of Covid what will winter hold for us? Will ski resorts operate? Skating rinks? Will we be able to celebrate Christmas and the other festivities of the season? There are so many questions to which none of us knows the answer.

But looking ahead, dreaming perhaps, is something we can all do. Even in the depth of winter we know that gardens lie dormant awaiting the coming of spring; there’s something so reassuring thinking about perennials sleeping in the snow-covered earth. Which brings me to famous gardens, which brings me to thinking about next year and where we may decide to travel. Maybe many of us will decide to stay in Canada; at this stage we don’t know what will be open but I think it’s a safe bet that renowned gardens will be welcoming visitors.

I love gardens, and I’ve been fortunate to visit many, both overseas and here in Canada and one of my at-home favourites is the English-style Reford Garden in Quebec, also know as the Jardins de Métis, located at Grand-Métis, a village east of Rimouski. A trip to this beautiful place takes the driving visitor along the south shore of the Lower St. Lawrence; it’s a wonderful trip with a beautiful destination.

Originally private, the Reford Gardens were opened to the public in 1962 and today they are recognized as one of Canada’s outstanding horticultural attractions. They were created between 1926 and 1958 by an avid gardener, Elsie Reford who had the most extraordinary vision to create a garden from a wilderness, in what is, for months of the year, a hostile environment.

The Refords were a prosperous Montreal family with a fishing lodge on a promontory at the confluence of the Mitis and St. Lawrence Rivers on the south shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The property was left to Elsie by her uncle, as he knew she was a keen outdoors woman who enjoyed fishing, riding, hunting and canoeing every summer. Eventually Elsie turned the fishing lodge into an elegant summer home known as Estevan Lodge and then embarked upon a three-decades-long endeavour to transform the surrounding100 acres of land into a garden. It was to become one of the most important collection of plants of its time, especially when the location of the land is taken into account: just a few degrees south of the 49th parallel, making the gardens the most northern in eastern Canada. Few gardens have been created in such difficult conditions.

Little by little, the spruce forest surrounding the lodge was transformed into a garden. Under Elsie’s direction, boulders from the surrounding area were transported onto the land, stone walls were built, trees were removed or transplanted, earth was moved, paths and steps were created, and the refined compost needed to grow exotic plants was obtained from local farmers. Locals were trained to become gardeners. Where experts had failed, Elsie succeeded by transplanting or propagating such rare species as azaleas and blue Himalayan poppies.

Inspired by gardens that she visited in England, Elsie’s garden is what is known as an informal one, with no flower beds as such, but a series of gardens nestled alongside a stream that winds its way through the property. Nevertheless, these linked gardens have separate names that give the potential visitor some idea of the pleasures that await. There are the Gentian and Azalea Alleys, the Stream Garden, the Blue Poppy Reserve, the Royal Alley, the Alpine Garden, the Flowering Meadow, the Bird Garden, the Pond, the High Bank, the Apple and Vegetable Garden and the Arboretum. There’s a Gardening Tools Museum and Estevan Lodge itself is now home to a gift shop, a ‘market’ and a flower-bedecked restaurant. Visitors wishing to picnic in the gardens can purchase a gourmet picnic basket from the marketplace which offers products from the gardens themselves and the choice and quantities are the decision of the purchaser.

Today the gardens are recognized as one of Canada’s outstanding horticultural attractions where visitors can admire the splendours of some 3,000 varieties of native and exotic plants. In addition, every year, the gardens are host to the International Garden Festival, the largest such festival in North America. Every year the organizers receive about 200 proposals from around the world, from artists, architects and landscape architects, for large installation works and sculptures to be shown in the natural setting of the gardens. These installations are especially loved by children.

During the dark days of World War II, when Elsie Reford’s son was serving in France, she wrote in her diary of her constant anxiety, but concluded ‘ … meanwhile nature unconcerned has gone on doing her best for beauty in the world’; a sentiment worth keeping in mind in the coming months. (As a footnote to that moment in time, it is interesting to learn that Bruce Reford, Elsie’s son, escaped from Dunkirk in one of the hundreds of small boats that sailed from England to take part in that miraculous evacuation.)

One of the chapter headings in the book that tells the story of the gardens is entitled ‘A Day in Paradise’. Think of that as you look ahead and perhaps think of the visiting the Reford Gardens. Think past the crimsons of fall and the white of winter to the blue of summer: the sky, the rivers, and those rare blue poppies in a beautiful setting, right here in Canada.