The city is hoping its reputation for publicly accessible nature spaces will blossom with an ambitious plan to transform the Toronto Botanical Garden and adjacent Edwards Gardens.

The new master plan seeks to restore and redevelop parts of the Toronto Botanical Garden, a roughly 1.5 hectare landscape on city-owned land, run by a non-profit organization, along with the adjacent Edwards Gardens near Leslie St. and Lawrence Ave. E.

“I think we recognize that Toronto is lacking something enjoyed by all major cities, namely a significant botanical garden,” said Harry Jongerden, Toronto Botanical Garden executive director. “Ours is very small, we think it’s the smallest in North America. We have an opportunity here.”

In partnership with the city, Jongerden said the master plan envisions both spaces as one entity to be operated with joint input.

It includes several key components, including a one-kilometre circuit path that loops around the centre of the landscape, providing access to points along the combined 13-hectare piece of land. There would also be a 100-metre pedestrian bridge over Wilket Creek, which runs through the middle of the gardens.

“It really ties the whole thing together,” said Scott Torrance, a landscape architect with FORREC, which was retained by the city to develop the plan. “People are going to arrive and they will go, ‘wow, I didn’t realize this place was so big and there’s so much here.’ Right now there’s this sense that ‘I can come and leave’ but now they’re going to spend the whole day and come back because you won’t be able to do it all in a day.”

The goal is to make the site “a destination,” according to Torrance.

“When you go to New York, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is on your list of places to go to,” he said. “We ended up with a project vision that is to create an internationally recognized botanical gardens in the City of Toronto. We can really just build on what’s there: this unique quality of the space, the creek running through it, the deep valley, the interesting character of the trees.”

Torrance calls the design “accessible but also experiential.”

An arboretum would take up much of the western portion of the gardens, and within it a centrally located, enclosed and shaded “Celebration Place” for community events or special displays like sculpture shows.

An expanded teaching garden adjacent to the arboretum would offer a space for visitors to take part in educational programs, such as learning how to grow or make specialty foods.

The garden will also be home to a tree house, designed for children, overlooking the foliage and ravines from up above.

“Botanical gardens, in addition to just creating the beauty, they also have a mandate that involves education, conservation and research,” Jongerden said. “Our garden was too small to be really engaged in conservation and research and we knew we could do a lot better with education. We felt that we should really set the bar high.”

As part of an initiative to add new, diverse plant species, there is a particular focus on incorporating those native to the region. From willows to dogwoods, the restoration also includes other unique flower species like Canada anemone, marsh marigold, spotted Joe Pyeweed, and irises, according to Torrance.

“People just want to be able to experience beautiful displays of plants. They connect with people,” he said.

It took six months to finalize the vision, after public consultations, meetings with research and conservation groups and workshops with Indigenous community leaders.

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As a result of the latter, each plant group in the garden will be labeled not only in English and Latin, but also the Anishinaabemowin language.

The project aims to make local ravines more accessible to garden visitors and further protect them, corresponding with the city’s ravine strategy to be completed this fall, according to Janie Romoff, general manager of the city’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation department.

“I think the really positive thing about the master planning process is the amount of public input that has gone into it,” she said.

While it could take nearly a decade to complete, Torrance said the impact of redeveloping the botanical garden could last for the next century.

“I don’t think it’s on everybody’s radar and that’s kind of a shame,” he said. “I think this will really help people realize what an amazing area this is.”