with Judith Tulloch
by ThoDias Gribbin
"We lived about a mile out of town in a
house surrounded by grounds laid out
with a good deal of taste by my father,
who delighted in landscape gardening."
This is how Joseph Pope, son of William
Henry Pope, remembered their family
home on the Mount Edward Road in
Parkdale. "Ardgowan," the name given
to the estate, reflects W. H. Pope's feeling
for landscape, "ard" being Highland
Gaelic for hill or height, and "gowan"
Lowland Gaelic for the common daisy.
As lawyer, land agent, journalist, and
politician, W.H. Pope was a colourful
and significant figure in Island public life
dUring the tumultuous 1860s. His eminence was established in 1859 with his
appointments as editor of the leading
Conservative paper, the Islander, and as
Colonial Secretary. In 1863 he stood for
election in Belfast as a Conservative and
was elected to the House of Assembly.
The next year he was a delegate to the
Charlottetown and Quebec conferences
on political union, and is thus remem-
28
William Henry Pope
bered as a Father of Confederation. In
1873, the year Prince Edward Island
joined Canada, he was named judge of
the Prince County Court in Summerside. His tenure at Ardgowan ended
about this time.
Built about 1850, the 76-acre
Ardgowan estate contained a large
house, outbuildings, and extensive
grounds. Pope leased the estate from
John Brecken in 1854, with an option to
buy it sometime before 1875. He made
many alterations to the property, particularly to the house and gardens, and is
reputed to have planted the still-existing
circular hedge himself. But Pope is never
mentioned in newspaper reports dealing
with the activities of the local horticultural and agricultural societies.
Perhaps his business and professional
endeavours did not permit such involvements.
William Dodd bought the property in
1879 and sub-divided it into two-acre
lots. Later, Hedley Bryenton undertook
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Sketch analysis of the 1880s photograph.
extensive planting, including estab~
lishing the orchard behind the house,
although he never had the pleasure of
the fruit. From the 1920s to themid-' 60s
the Newsom family lived at Ardgowan; a
family member recalled a pine hedge on
the croquet lawn, and bloodroots, ferns,
and Catalpa trees on the east boundry,
grown from seed from Ithaca, New York.
The present Ardgowan estate was acquired by Parks Canada in 1967 as a
second National Historic Park in the
Charlottetown area (after Province
House). Restoration has concentrated
on the house exterior and its setting· of
1860s Victorian gardenesque on the
outskirts of the young capital city. The
1.8 hectare site, which now includes. a
district Parks Canada office as well as
display area, was officially opened on 23
July 1982.
same for several years, we can see that
the popular flowers and plants included:
roses and moss roses, wallflowers, geraniums, flowering myrtle, pansies, fuchsia, and chinese primrose. Prize lists later
in the decade added such plants as
dahlias, hollyhocks, hydrangea, oleander, heliotrope, and foxglove.
The Rev. Mr. Sutherland's 1861 publication A Manual of the Geography and
Natural and Civil History of Prince Edward Island lists roses, sweetbrier, white
and orange lilies, tulips, daisies,
hyacinths, dahlias, marigold, asters, and
honeysuckle as common flowers.
A most intriguing and detailed plant
list comes from a garden plan at Government House dated 15 May 1858. It
shows a,rectangular garden divided into
four smaller rectangles and a central
circular bed. Some of the plants named
on this plan are: Centaurea (Cornflower), Phaclelia eutoca (Bellflower),
Convolulus (Morning Glory), Silene
(Pennsylvania Catch Fly), Iberis umbellata (Purple Candy-Tuft), and Dianthus
(Sweet William). This plan also records a
number of mysterious names like Isolana
and Catananche Corenlea.
William Irving's Charlottetown Agricultural Warehouse and Seed Store
announced, in an 1859 advertisement,
the expected arrival from England and
the United States of a variety of seeds
including dahlia roots, anemones,
ranunculas, gloxinias, carnations,
picotees, peonies, rose plants, scarlet
honeysuckle and gladish.
Orchards were also becoming increasingly popular, as the Horticultural
Society records attest. In 1856 the Examiner commented that pears, hardly
known a few years before, were now
"beginning to· multiply and are being
brought into town in something like
quantity." "Warblington," a semi-rural
property somewhat like Ardgowan, was
described as having extensive andvalu-
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Horticulture in the 18605
In the restoration of the grounds it was
important to avoid using such things as
hybrid rose bushes, improved strains of
shrubs, and milled steel or galvanized
fence-nails. However, since our research
turned up little that related to the plants
.and tools used by Pope, accuracy in details had to come from general sources of
the time.
The Island's Horticultural Society held
its first exhibition in 1851. From the prize
lists, which remained substantially the
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Illustrative plan of the restored Ardgowan.
29
mented ring of bedding plants. It must
surely have been a most admired garden, and a trend-setter of its time. The
five-acre gardens of John McNaughton
Norton at Brudenell would have been
another source of inspiration and taste
among Island gardeners of the mid-19th
century.
Industry was quick to respond to the
needs of the gentleman horticulturists in
the provision of spades, trowels, shears,
pruning saws, and even averruncators all of which were advertised for sale in ,
able orchards when offered for sale in
1862. Ardgowan itself had no orchard
until the 20th century.
The early Victorian taste for formal
bedding of multi-coloured annuals and
perennials in all their varieties was evident in Island gardens of Pope's time.
This is illustrated by a finely-detailed
1870 watercolour by George Ackerman
showing the garden of the Holman family in Summerside; the lawn is framed by
shrubs and tall flowers, with a central
circular flower bed surrounded by a seg-
Ardgowan as painted by Katie McLean in 1888.
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Sketch analysis of the 1888 painting.
30
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Charlottetown in the 1850s and '60s.
Lawns were originally cut with a scythe,
as the lawn mower did not come into
common use here until perhaps the early
'70s; Arthur DeW. Haszard's Agricultural Store on Queen Street was advertising them in 1874.
A man of education, Pope would also
have been influenced in his landscaping
task by the contemporary literature dealing with horticultural methods and tastefullayouts. George Brown, Pope's eminent house-guest dUring the Charlottetown Conference, reported that Pope
had a fine library at Ardgowan. Among
the volumes that we may speculate it
included are Everymon his own Gardener by Thomas tv1aine and John Abercrombie (London, 1782) - a book of
monthly gardening activities for kitchen
and fruit and flower gardens, hot houses
and shrubberies. And Andrew Jackson
Downing's 1850 publication,
Architecture of Country Houses, must
surely have been in the home of a country gentleman interested in landscape
gardening. Also, the 1849 shelf lists of
the Legislative Library - then the only
public library on the Island - include
Lardner's Botany and two books by
John Loudon, Agriculture and
Gardening.
Reconstruction
The analysis of seeds and pollen from
soil samples is useful for identifying the
plants that grew on a specific site at a
specific time. However, the plants can
only be dated if the soil is deposited in
distinguishable layers. No datable layers
were formed at Ardgowan, so the specific plants growing here in Pope's time
cannot be exactly determined. Random
soil samples contained an abundance of
plant seeds normally found in vegetable
and field crops, such as Umabelliferae
(carrots, parsnips, celery), Crucifera
(mustard), and Polygonacea (dock, rhubarb).
Archaeological probes helped to define the basic layout of the grounds at
Ardgowan. Old furrow lines beneath the
surface indicated a garden area northwest of the house. The circular drive in
front of the house was uncovered as two
tracks of ash, each about a metre wide
and no more than a metre apart. This
was typical of the Island, where carriage
wheels rutted the soft ground, and fireplace or stove ashes were thrown in to
provide drainage and a firmer surface. A
garbage dump about three metres by
four metres was uncovered west of the
house. Excavations turned up ceramics
and glass.
Other valuable sources of information
were pictures of the site. An 1880s
photograph shows the house and immediate foreground, including the circular drive with its stone edging and the
circular hedge.
Considerably more of the grounds can
be seen in an oil painting dating from
1888. Mallets and balls lie at random on
the croquet lawn as if tea had been
announced in the middle of a game. The
circular hedge surrounding the croquet
lawn is still remembered by Marion
Newsom as an overgrown pine hedge
that was removed in the 1920s. A white
lawn-seat encircling a vine-covered treestump provides comfort and a note of
ornamentation. The white building
shrouded in trees to the left of the house
is apparently in the same iocation as the
present-day barn, and is either the servants' cottage or barn mentioned by
Joseph Pope as the only outbuildings of
his family's tenure. Other buildings had
been added not long thereafter, as a land
survey plan of 1879 shows three rectangular buildings behind the house.
One of these may even have been the
present barn, relocated in time for its
1888 portrait.
These sketchy details were supplemented with general information
from contemporary sources. For example, some representation of the manipulated and cultivated landscape of late19th century Prince Edward Island can
be found in the 1880 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Province ofPrince Edward
Island, familiarly called Meacham's Atlas
after its Philadelphia publisher. The
properties as illustrated are all neat and
prosperous. Considering that their owners paid for the illustrations, this is hardly
surprising. In any case, the general layout must have been fairly true to life.
Ardgowan is not one of the properties
illustrated, but neighbOUring properties
that are, such as "Glynwood," offer reference points on the current style in
gentlemen's estates. In general these
drawings show the houses in simply-laid
grounds with driveways, fences that
were ornate in the front and plain picket
around the farmyard, and lawns within
which are grouped a few shrubs and
flower beds, some urns and a rustic seat
or two. Ardgowan today reflects this
taste: a double-swung gate opens to a
tree-lined driveway through a lawn
where flower beds, urns, and rustic furniture add ornament.
In the restoration of this landscape,
Parks Canada hopes to extend an insight
into 19th century Island life, The site is
open year-round, and offers visitors the
chance to step back in time to the estate
of a Father of Confederation.
Sources
The Joseph Pope material is from
Maurice Pope, ed., Public Servant: the
Memoirs of Sir Joseph Pope (Toronto,
1960). ThebestaccountofW.H. Pope's
career is by Ian Ross Robertson in the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, X,
593-599. John Ball's 1879 plan of
Ardgowan is in the Public Archives of
P.E.I., while the 1856 Government
House garden plan is in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Thanks to Marion Newsom for her recollections of
Ardgowan, and to· R. Paxton and R.
MacKenzie for illustrations.
Ardgowan today.
31