Canadian Museum of Nature
The Canadian Museum of Nature is set to move on a major landscaping initiative with plants from the boreal forest.As spring inches closer, so does the completion of the Canadian Museum of Nature’s first permanent outdoor living gallery. The west side of the museum grounds will showcase three different ecosystems of Canada: Arctic tundra, boreal forest and prairie grasslands. The landscaping and construction will be completed this spring, with the official opening on June 17.
It is the first phase of the planned Landscapes of Canada Gardens, a project the museum says it hopes will eventually surround the building and display many more of Canada’s different environments.
Just last year, the west-side grounds looked quite different. The iconic mammoth statues were still in their place along O’Connor Street and none of the planting or construction of the gardens had taken place.
Today, the main landscaping elements are installed and a new sculpture of an iceberg sits at the centre of the garden’s Arctic tundra environment. All that is left to do is some planting in the tundra section.
These changes follow on the heels of the museum’s new parking lot on the west side, located between the museum and the gardens.
“We did a good job with that,” says John Swettenham, museum director of marketing and media relations, “and now we want to go one step further of ‘good job’ and create something really meaningful for the museum . . . and that’s what this will be.”
Swettenham says the gardens will include areas for “natural play,” citing stepping stone-like paths of logs as an example, and even an outdoor classroom for the museum’s educational programming in the prairie area when the grass gets long enough for the museum to cut one out.
Steppe grass will grow around the mammoth sculpture’s new position on Mcleod Street, putting the extinct Ice Age animals back in their natural environment after thousands of years.
In the ecosystems themselves, the boreal forest will have large trees and plants such as fireweed, the prairie grasslands will have tall grasses and the Arctic tundra will have “shrubby” plants along with the iceberg sculpture.
Designed by Canadian sculpture and inventor William Lishman, the sculpture is made of stainless steel and its tallest part extends more than 13 metres in height. Lishman says he tried a number of designs before coming up with the one currently installed at the museum.
“Icebergs come in such amazing forms it was a bit staggering trying to choose something of that size that could be fabricated from stainless steel and catch the grandeur of a true iceberg,” the artist said in an email.
Why an iceberg? Lishman says the idea was hatched when he was talking with museum CEO Meg Beckel about how many Canadians had never seen an iceberg up close and personal. But the tall sculpture is also there to provide viewers with a true sense of the Arctic landscape.
“The Arctic is an interesting place because there is that contrast of scales – you have this vast open tundra, burrowing plains and mountains and hills as far as the eye can see, but not a single tree,” says Paul Sokoloff, a CMN senior research assistant in botany. “Some of the tallest plants are under a metre tall. That’s really the dichotomy we’re trying to play with with the iceberg sculpture.”
Representing each ecosystem accurately is an important goal for the museum. It was made a bit more difficult, however, since some plants native to the Arctic tundra will not grow in Ottawa.
“Cacti don’t grow in Ottawa because, well, it’s not warm enough, and the reverse is true in the other way,” says Sokoloff. But Sokoloff says they were able to find Arctic plants adapted for rock gardens in Ottawa and are currently using some of those.
“The nice thing about the garden too, is a garden is pretty much the only exhibit that we can do that is always changing,” says Sokoloff. “We’ll be changing plants, we’ll be changing things around, we’ll be learning as it develops. So that’s something that will be a lot of fun to work on.”
The public will first be able to access the gardens during the grand opening on June 17.