Stratford-based musician Loreena McKennitt latest to advocate for city’s historic Shakespearean Garden

A group of volunteers helping to maintain and promote Stratford’s historic Shakespearean Garden have welcomed a new patron – singer-songwriter Loreena McKennitt.

The Friends of Shakespearean Garden unveiled McKennitt’s new role this week.

“We’re just thrilled,” their chairperson, Reg White, said Tuesday. “It backs up the validity of our effort to help the board of park management restore that garden and enhance it.”

McKennitt, a longtime Stratford resident, is a Juno Award-winning folk musician with a history of community work in the city. That includes the preservation of another historic local landmark – a former Waterloo Street public school now known as the Falstaff Community Centre.

McKennitt said Tuesday she’s “delighted” to extend her support to Stratford’s Shakespearean Garden. She’s adding her name to a long list of local champions who have promoted the green space on Huron Street since it opened in 1936, nearly two decades before the city’s first ever festival of Shakespearean theatre.

“I have enjoyed this gem and relished in its rejuvenating qualities over the years,” McKennitt said. “I feel now, more than ever, that these kinds of oases are essential to a healthy and inclusive community. As always, these special places have demanded vision as well as advocates all the way along.”

Stratford’s Shakespearean Garden was officially opened by Lord Tweedsmuir, Canada’s governor general at the time, after several years of discussions among members of the community about how to make improvements to the city’s park system.

Shortly afterwards, one of those stakeholders – Tom Orr, an influential local businessman and community leader – was able to secure rose bushes, oak acorns and saplings from King George VI while he continued to advocate for the garden’s development. According to research by the Stratford Perth Archivesthe city was also gifted seeds directly from Stratford, England, for the new garden, which prominently featured flowers, bushes and shrubs mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

Featured in the garden today is the chimney of a 19th-century woolen mill that burned down around three years before the city purchased the land in 1925. White said the garden was expanded in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Among its other amenities is a gazebo donated to Stratford’s board of park management from TD Bank.

More recently, supporters working to solidify the garden’s legacy as a city landmark added another focal point last year – an urn dedicated by the Stratford and District Horticultural Society.

This summer, the Friends of Shakespearean Gardens are planning to add to its 92-metre perennial bed, a feature White said is “pretty unusual in Southwestern Ontario as far as I understand.”

More than 100 peony clumps will be donated by the Canadian Peony Society this year.

“These are going to be well-established multi-root pieces that should produce flowers very quickly,” White said.

The green space also hosts a variety of community events every year, including plenty of programs from the nearby Stratford Public Library, another landmark.

“This is the only Shakespearean Garden of that name in the whole country,” White added. “We are an international theater center here in Stratford and we have people coming from all over, many of whom are very discerning (gardeners). The board of park management needs some backup, and we’re trying to provide that.”

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