Isabella Preston was the OAC’s lily builder
In 1939, Howard L. Hutt, Emeritus Professor of Horticulture at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) recalled his feelings when he first saw the new lilies growing there:
“I can well remember seeing their first bloom, four and five immense white flowers on sturdy stems about three feet tall. And I thought well here is a worth while new lily. But when I happened to be at the College a week later and saw two or three of the original plants at least five feet high and bearing fifteen blooms I felt like taking off my hat, even if I did not throw it up in the air.”
The object of Hutt’s joy was a new variety of lily developed at the OAC by Isabella Preston. Hutt was hardly the last one enthused by the new flower: the Creelman lily, named after the OAC president, became an international star.
The lily’s story begins with the arrival of Isabella Preston. She and her sister Margaret had emigrated from England to Canada after their mother’s death in 1912. Isabella was keen on horticulture and enrolled in classes on the subject at the OAC. That she was entering a field dominated by men seemed no obstacle to her, nor to Professor James Crow, who hired her to work full-time in the OAC greenhouses in 1913.
There, Miss Preston devoured all the books in the horticulture library and began to experiment. In 1916, she crossbred two varieties of lily, hoping to create a hybrid adapted to the Canadian climate. The seedlings germinated the next year and were then grown outdoors in 1919, when Professor Hutt likely encountered them.
The Creelman lily was offered for sale in 1923 and grew in the gardens and affections of many, being admired throughout North America and as far as Japan and Australia. It found a prominent place in the gardens of the OAC. It also featured on formal occasions. For example, the 1942 wedding of Muriel Ricketts at her parents’ home on Grove Street in Guelph featured bouquets of Creelman lilies, roses, and baby’s breath.
Miss Preston’s career also blossomed and she left the OAC in 1920 for the Botanic Garden at the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa, where she spent the remainder of her fruitful career. She retired in 1946 and settled in Georgetown, Ont., where she remained a fixture in the horticultural scene until her death in 1965.
Although the Creelman lily remained popular into the 1950s, floral fashion moved on and the plant seemed to vanish. In 2007, when asked if any were in the collection of the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) in Burlington, curator Alex Henderson discovered there were not. Furthermore, no one else had any specimens either.
Hoping to rescue this bit of botanic history, Mr. Henderson continued his inquiries. After some years and dead-ends, fortune smiled on his endeavours when, in July 2017, Ms. Cynthia Culp called into the CBC radio show “Ontario Today” to ask about these “Creelman lilies” that she had inherited from her grandmother. Her grandmother had obtained them from a neighbour who had purchased them from the OAC in 1950. These plants had been grown and passed along to Cynthia’s mother and then to her, along with the name “Creelman lily.”
Ms. Culp and Mr. Henderson were put in touch and some plant material was duly transferred to the RBG. There, the flowers have been grown and compared by expert botanists to descriptions of the Creelman lily recorded by Miss Preston. The verdict: So far, so good. The specimens appear to be the genuine article, although a year of observations will be needed to put any doubts to bed.
Against the odds, it appears that the Creelman lily is back and Isabella Preston’s legacy is not lost. Perhaps, in the not-to-distant future, this flower will blossom again in the gardens of the University of Guelph and beyond.