CULTIVATING HERITAGE

An Ontario wildflower expert has a plan to let us tiptoe through the trilliums at Ontario Place,

Jim French has his summers worked out pretty well. He spends five days of the week at the cottage, and two days in town, playing bridge with his wife. Hey, it works for both of them. We were chatting the other day, not about his marital arrangements, but because he has another, even more brilliant idea. Wait for it. Jim is a retired insurance guy, observant, nearing 80 years of age. He has a gimlet eye and a straightforward outlook. For our purposes today, he is also an expert in the wildflowers of Ontario.

He came by his knowledge the hard way, and from the cleanest of slates. “I bought the cottage in 1981. I looked around. I saw healthy plants, but I knew nothing, so I started a little garden.”

How little? An acre and a half, which he has since expanded. His property is now more properly known as the Stoney Lake Native Plant Preserve.

He said, “There’s a prairie, an oak savannah, a woodland garden with ferns, grasses, trees and shrubs.”

Plus ladyslippers, trilliums, Indian paintbrush, and so on, all native to Ontario.

Jim, in the beginning, took classes to learn more about the wildflowers of the province. One day he noticed an ad in the paper: someone was looking for native plant seeds.

He wrote the paper to say he could help; three weeks later he got an envelope, stuffed with requests from many other people who were also looking for seeds. He said, “I thought, why not join up together? And so we formed the Canadian Wildflower Society.

“We went from zero to a thousand members in a year; at one time, we had

“Why don’t we have a native plant reserve at Ontario Place? A place for residents and visitors, a place to show kids what a trillium looks like.” JIM FRENCH CANADIAN WILDFLOWER SOCIETY

two thousand members.” The membership, at the moment, is roughly 500.

He said, “We have a seed exchange — people send us seeds, we list them, people order them. It’s the most efficient way of propagating these species.”

Here is something you may not know: “A few years ago, a woodlot on Lake Erie came up for sale; they were asking $65,000.”

Not just any woodlot, but a rare piece of land, part of what once was the Carolinian forest. The society didn’t have the money to buy it, until a guy called and made a whopping donation; the rest of the purchase price was covered by a heritage grant.

The property is now known as the Shining Tree Woods; it is glorious for its rare species: tulip trees, black gum, pignut hickory, putty root orchid, yellow mandarin, board beech fern; it is also one of the few places where the endangered cucumber magnolia grows and regenerates naturally. I knew none of this. Now, to the bright idea. Jim said, “You know how they’re redeveloping Ontario Place.” I do know that. “Why don’t we have a native plant reserve at Ontario Place? A place for residents and visitors, a place to show kids what a trillium looks like.” In case you didn’t know, the trillium is one of the symbols of the province.

“You could have a water feature, with frogs and salamanders; a woodland with spring-blooming trees, dogwood and high bush cranberry, the spring ephemerals; you could have all the native trees, including the pawpaw; you could have a black oak savannah. In all, I’d guess you’d want 100 different species of tree. And a prairie, with all the native grasses.” My dumb question: Why? He said, “This is Ontario’s heritage. It would be the first of its kind in Canada.” What would it cost? “I have no idea. I don’t care. My job is vision.” I like what he sees. Above all, I love the question he asks: Why not celebrate Ontario’s heritage in the place named for the province?

He has written to the minister responsible.

Nothing yet. Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca