Newsletter Article -- January 2002

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Botanical Garden Proposal Rejected by Advisory Council and Heritage Ottawa

by Gordon Cullingham
CHOO/COPO representative on the Advisory Council

Two years ago Agriculture and Agrifood Canada set up the Advisory Council to the Central Experimental Farm following the designation of the Farm as a National Historic Site, and the subsequent set of guidelines called for in the Commemorative Integrity Statement.

In the Minister's statement at the time, The Advisory Council is to consist of eleven members delegated by councils, associations and committees representing a broad spectrum of local and national interests. These members will solicit opinions and advice from the organizations they represent and provide advice and recommendations to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) on the future of the CEF. It will ensure the decisions taken on the management of the CEF in the coming years reflect the aspirations of major stake holders, and through them, the public at large.

The 1999 News Release further states that "This statement, developed by Parks Canada and AAFC, establishes the basis for managing the heritage values of the site."

Those "heritage values" are watched over on the Advisory Council by the Council of Heritage Organizations in 0ttawa, at the local level, and the Canadian Heritage Foundation at the national one. Also vigilant from other perspectives, as well as from the heritage one, are representatives of the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, Friends of the Central Experimental Farm, the Federation of Citizens' Associations, as well as Planners, Landscape Architects, 4-H Clubs, the Ottawa School Board, and specialists from the Montreal Botanical Garden and McGill University. Heritage Ottawa is a member of CHOO/COPO.

That's the setup. What has happened in those two years? Mostly housekeeping, such as establishing Terms of Reference and Criteria for evaluating proposals for changes in land use on the Farm.

The first consequential proposal to be placed on the Council's agenda by the Agriculture Department was an application by the Ottawa Botanical Garden Society to establish a botanical garden on the eastern edges of the Farm and on some adjoining property belonging to the Departments of National Defence and Public Works. This project has been under way for some three years, but only reached the Council this summer. After over two months of concentrated study the Advisory Council at its September 20 meeting passed a unanimous recommendation that the Department should reject the application.

The Agriculture Department has so far made no announcement, but they have been appealed to by the Ottawa Botanical Garden Society's President, Ian Efford. What happens next is anyone's guess, but the Advisory Council is no longer seized of the issue - although the Department could send a revised application back to it.

The reasons for the rejection are numerous, detailed, and on many levels. One development that simplified consideration was the refusal of the Departments of Defence and Public works to contribute their lands to the Botanical Garden Society. This meant that the tourist-attracting, revenue-producing activities associated with pavilions around Dow's Lake were no longer part of the proposal. This left only the lands east of Prince of Wales Drive. And those lands contained the Arboretum, an institution deeply cherished by the public, the Fletcher Wildlife Garden directly south of the Arboretum and, south of that, two fields of research lands on either side of the road into Hartwell Locks. The independent management of the Fletcher Wildlife Garden has not become part of the project. The Friends of the Farm are the prime operators of the Arboretum, and they too have not become partners in the scheme.

Apart from deeply worrying unanswered financial questions (e.g., no specified sources of capital, either public or private, to build all the fences, roadways, kiosks, signage and parking lots; no reason to expect visitors in the seriously diminished undertaking to arrive in quantities sufficient to meet operating costs). Indeed, there was so little left of the original ambitious plan that it had become unclear just what was being requested.

The heritage concerns were, of course, paramount, not just for the heritage wardens on the Council, but for all members. The National Historic Site designation and its Commemorative Integrity Statement were the guiding manuals, and it was a matter of making the OBGS application square with them, in order to protect the reasons for that designation -- namely, the picturesque landscape, the roadways, sight lines and buildings long loved, the farm-like atmosphere, the quiet familiarity of the place. It was clear that those reassuring characteristics could not survive the frenetic activity of a driving commercialized enterprise.

In the end, the incompatibility between the OBGS proposal, even in its extremely diminished form, and the Historic Site, could not be resolved. The Council was undivided in its recommendation to the Department of Agriculture.

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