The Reford Gardens | Elsie’s Flowering Legacy

Elsie Reford has spent more than 30 years transforming a spruce forest into a plant sanctuary. His great-grandson has devoted the equivalent of his life to preserving this heritage, which has become a reference in horticulture. With a third book on the subject, Alexander Reford opens another chapter in the history of his grandmother and reveals some of the finest treasures of the Reford Gardens.

Isabelle Morin

The Press

If she returned to her flowery paradise, Elsie Reford would find her gardens transformed by time. No doubt she would be delighted to discover works of art sown among her plants. She would certainly be amazed that her journey had inspired so many artists and artisans. A novel, a circus show, chamber music, a biography and several books on horticulture have their source in the beauties she created with infallible determination.

Elsie would probably collect these honors with the restrained enthusiasm of a squire, proud but secretly offended that millions of visitors had been able to break into the family fishing camp. She reserved her Estevan villa for distinguished guests and kept the 100 acres inherited from her uncle along the river and the Mitis River like a fortress, sheltered from the noise of cars and all horticultural machinery.

Resistant to a certain modernity, she was nonetheless a visionary, “a socialite who put her hands on the ground every day before putting on her evening dress, a leader who did not like to be led and who would probably have been politician or businesswoman these days,” portrays Alexander Reford in an interview.

In the book In the Reford Gardens: Meet Elsie Refordthe author tells the story of this exceptional woman, involved in politics and for the status of women, passionate about art, fishing, music, fashion and sports, whose gardens nevertheless remain the most tangible legacy. His sense of design and his audacity helped shape horticultural culture in northern climates and earned him the respect of the botanical world.

Heroine of the horticultural world

In 1926, when she was 54, Elsie started gardening without knowing anything about plants. She gorges herself on horticultural reading and deliberately avoids professional help. This autodidact side will contribute to give to its gardens a particular aspect. His work defies the horticultural rules of the time and is expressed according to a unique aesthetic and ecological approach.

“No one had yet attempted to create a garden in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, where the climatic conditions were considered too harsh,” explains Alexander Reford.

With clay soil overlaid with poor soil, the Estevan estate was otherwise unsuitable for cultivation. The gardener has remedied these shortcomings by creating her own compost of sand and dead leaves. In 10 years, she has transformed more than 20 acres of hostile land into a breathtaking garden. The next two decades were spent refining it, until his death in 1967.

Collect plants like paintings

Elsie Reford’s work is a collector’s garden and differs from the ornamental garden in that the plants are grouped by species and varieties. This peculiarity is not surprising when we know Elsie’s fervor for collections of all kinds, mainly paintings, jewelry and works of art. In the 1920s, the socialite assiduously visited galleries in New York and London. This interest naturally transferred to plants.

It is this plant collection that Alexander Reford presents in his book and that Louise Tanguay illustrates in photos. Twelve emblematic plants, among Elsie’s favourites, including the azalea, rose, peony, gentian, lily and the delicate Himalayan blue poppy which contributes to the reputation of the Reford Gardens. In her notebooks, the gardener had meticulously noted down the details of her explorations. The author has gone through them to convey his observations and advice.

Elsie Reford venerated the natural beauties of the site, to which she added her touch. The Reford Gardens follow each other along the stream and are interspersed with small woods left intact. “She dared to introduce plants from different countries around the world without letting herself be held back by the knowledge of the time, which considered certain plants too fragile for our climate or too complex to cultivate, underlines her great-grandson. She was truly a horticultural adventurer. »

At the dawn of her 100th birthday, the enchanting heritage of Elsie Reford is still very much alive and resembles her: fragrant, intimate, audacious and creative. Of those in which one enters in silence as in a cathedral to better indulge in contemplation. And of all this, Elsie could only approve!

In the Reford Gardens: Meet Elsie Reford

Alexander Reford

Editions de l’Homme

324 pages