Marilyn Whitaker has deep roots in Ottawa’s urban environment

Krista Ranacher

Your correspondent has had the pleasure of living in Sandy Hill since 2017. I was delighted to be assigned this piece and spend an hour with my across-the-street neighbour Marilyn Whitaker who our editor described as Sandy Hill’s gardening expert.

While Whitaker might agree that she’s an avid gardener and environmental activist she suggests that some other Sandy Hill residents have more gardening expertise, such as former Tulip Festival director Michel Gauthier; native trees expert Brian Dewalt; and Richard Gervais, owner of Auberge King Edward Bed and Breakfast.

While she has lived on my block of Blackburn Avenue for almost 50 years, Whitaker spent her childhood in Old Ottawa South before going to Toronto, where she earned a Masters in Environmental Studies. She comes naturally to a curious engagement with the natural world as her father worked for the National Research Council, and she spoke fondly of the string of beaches that no longer dot the banks of the Rideau River.

Whitaker honed her skills in negotiation and activism over a career in the federal government with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the former Department of Indian Affairs. She participated in Canadian delegations to international conferences on indigenous and other issues.

A number of years ago, she joined the Old Ottawa South Garden Club (OOSGC) and as she approached retirement from the civil service, she decided to go back to school. She was among the first to graduate from the new Horticultural Industries Program at Algonquin College. At that point she stepped up her garden club involvement and has now been the co-president of OOSGC for more than seven years.

The club’s program is ever varied. You can get a taste in their regular column in the Old Ottawa South newspaper The Oscar.  Currently the conversation is very much geared towards native plants and encouraging gardeners to create bigger spaces that can serve as urban oases that support balanced bird and insect populations.

The thing with our urban environment is there’s always something to do. I was most impressed with Whitaker’s ongoing efforts through her various associations and collaborations, including the Sandy Hill Tree and Greening Group that started with a de-paving project along Somerset Street back in 2016, finding patches and corners where the pavement could be peeled up to make room for trees or other easy care native plants. I got to see a binder full of plans that sparked my appreciation of how challenging it is to get everyone to agree to a seemingly simple and practical evolution of a space.

The Tree and Greening Group is currently working on ongoing projects to remove invasive weeds and plant native trees and plants along the Rideau River.

As a current board member of Action Sandy Hill and Co-chair of its Environmental Committee, Whitaker also collaborates with the group Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability (CAFES) that advocates for greening the urban environment with a focus on trees in mitigating the effects of climate change. And along with the Committee and co-chair Bryan DeWalt, she organized a second very successful Sandy Hill Eco-Fair in Strathcona Park this past June 1st.

We finished with a short tour of her front garden which I admire for its lack of lawn, colourful foliage, and apparent ease of care. Whitaker advises that it is good to aim for most of your plantings to be native plants. But it is still okay to keep enjoying our (non-native) peonies, for example, especially when they’ve been a part of our gardens for as long as we can remember. She pointed out her lovely native wild ginger with springtime light green foliage and coral bells that are the first to poke through the melting snow with their almost purple leaves.

Whitaker also does garden plans and plantings for neighbourhood gardens and green spaces. For those of us with less time and space, she’s working on pollinator pots and suggests container planting is a great place to start finding the joy in cultivating our own green ambitions. Indeed, Whitaker is an inspiration and a fountain of knowledge on getting involved and being the change we want to see in making our own spaces and our shared urban environment green and sustainable.