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

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

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

“We’re just thrilled,” its chairman, Reg White, said on Tuesday. “It validates the validity of our efforts to assist the Board of Park Management in restoring and enhancing this garden.”

A longtime resident of Stratford, McKennitt is a Juno Award-winning folk musician with a history of community service in the city. This includes the preservation of another of the area’s historic landmarks – a former public school on Waterloo Street, now known as the Falstaff Community Centre.

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

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“I’ve enjoyed this gem over the years and enjoyed its rejuvenating properties,” said McKennitt. “Now more than ever, I feel that these types of oases are essential to a healthy and inclusive community. As always, these special places have called for both vision and advocates.”

Stratford’s Shakespearean Garden was officially opened by Lord Tweedsmuir, then Canada’s Governor-General, after several years of community debate over how to improve the city’s park system.

Shortly thereafter, one of those stakeholders – Tom Orr, an influential local businessman and community leader – was able to secure rose bushes, acorns and seedlings from King George VI while continuing to champion the garden’s development. According to research by the Stratford Perth Archives, the city also received seeds direct from Stratford, England for the new garden, which will highlight flowers, bushes and shrubs mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

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In the garden today is the chimney of a 19th-century wool mill that burned down about three years before the city bought the property in 1925. White said the garden was expanded in the late ’60s or early ’70s. Other amenities include a gazebo donated by TD Bank to Stratford’s Board of Park Management.

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

This summer, the Friends of Shakespearean Gardens plan to expand their 92-foot perennial bed, a feature that White says is “quite unusual in southwestern Ontario, as far as I know.”

Over 100 bunches of peonies will be donated by the Canadian Peony Society this year.

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“These will be well-established, multi-rooted pieces that should produce flowers very quickly,” White said.

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

“This is the only Shakespearean garden of that name in the country,” added White. “We are an international theater center here in Stratford and we have people from all over the world, many of whom are very demanding (gardeners). The Board of Park Management needs support and we are trying to provide it.”

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