History of the Dundas Museum Gardens
Kevin Puddister, Curator and General Manager
interviewed by JS Veter
The neat thing about the museum is that it’s built on an apple orchard next to the Piri House, which is now incorporated into the museum. The land that the museum sits on was donated in memory of Doctor Pirie, who had owned this home from 1912 until he passed. His wife, who was president of the historical society, thought that this would be a good place to build a private museum here in Dundas.
The grounds have always been fairly basic. It used to have a wrought iron gate fence around the front, and over the years that sort of developed. There was once actually a lovely pathway between the Pirie House and the museum, an accessible pathway with lovely landings and different things.
There also used to be lots of large bushes alongside the museum, which were not ideal from [a maintenance perspective]. When we got funding to renovate and expand and connect the museum to the Pirie House with the Atrium for accessibility, putting in our new elevator and the ramping and everything like that, those gardens were removed. There had been budget [allocated] for a garden around the whole property, but some unexpected costs around fire rating an historic 1873 house [forced the landscaping to be cut back]. [W]e finished the project with essentially grass, right up to the building from the sidewalk and the trees that were still here.
After we reopened in 2013/2014, a volunteer who was working on his Master Gardener certification, Larry Saigar, came to do some research on historic gardens and gardeners in Dundas. He found lots of really interesting things connected to some families and was able to bring in some what was believed to be historic plantings: some peonies from the Kiki family, through the Leonards of Dundas.
We received some donations from Dirt Depot and Larry Saigar recreated a kind of berm garden meant to prevent people from cutting the corner. And we worked with the Hamilton Dahlia /Chrysanthemum Society to install dahlias there at the corner for a couple of years, and that was really quite spectacular.
Finally the board was able to gather funds to support the redevelopment of the grounds and to install an accessible pathway around the property. We worked with Sunny Skies, which was a landscaping company at the time. Natalie Jarvis designed the grounds for us. We were really happy with that plan and we added in interpretation of some historic artefacts.
We're very excited to have a partnership with the Dundas Horticultural Society and to have folks who are excited about the work, and interested and knowledgeable. We enjoy it, but it’s certainly outside the expertise of the museum staff and not something we typically have time for.
We’ve always styled ourselves as an open and welcoming place for everyone in the community. The grounds are welcoming, but they could be even more so, especially if they are a little more maintained and manicured. We’d also like to add another layer of interpretation, so the garden becomes not only the historical artefacts, but you can learn about the plantings here and take some ideas back for your own garden. I think there's a lot of great potential there. Much like we tell stories inside the museum, we hope to tell some store more stories outside in the garden.
Join us on Thursday, September 24 at 6:30 to launch the Dundas Horticultral Society's exciting partnership with the Dundas Museum and Archives! Please RSVP HERE
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