Edwards Gardens, located at the corner of Leslie Street and Lawrence Avenue in Toronto, Canada, was once the private sanctuary of businessman Rupert Edwards. After purchasing the rural 27-acre site in 1944, Edwards created a glorious ravine garden with one of the largest rockeries in Canada, an elaborate series of pools and waterfalls and a nine-hole golf course. In 1955, with development encroaching upon his pastoral idyll, he sold the property to Metro Toronto as a public park. The original Civic Garden Centre, the former Edwards manse, burned down a few years later and architect Raymond Moriyama was commissioned to design the replacement Garden Centre and the new Garden Pavilion.
The gardens are an artists’ delight with paths through wooded ravines, scenic bridges over Wilket Creek, hidden walkways, manicured gardens on various levels, teaching gardens, and sylvan vistas.
I have been painting in Edwards Gardens every summer for the past 20+ years on my own and with other members of the small Northview Group of Artists. I paint in watercolors for ease of transportation and as a way to capture the moment in a fluid manner. Because I paint sitting on the ground, all perspectives are “worms eye view”–meaning that I am seeing my subject from a very low stance.
