Board Member Profile: Liz Deleeuw
- jessica36732
- Dec 7
- 5 min read
By Liz Deleeuw
My inner-city upbringing in 1960s Edmonton was punctuated with trips to a hobby farm where my friends and I played in ditches complete with shrubs and wildflowers. This was a time before the systematic selective spraying of ditches to wipe out all broadleaf plants. Back then I did not know what a native plant was, and for many, many years I still would not know.
A simple explanation of what a native plant is could have saved years of learning it the hard way.
Botany was my first attempt at exploring the plant world. However, the first-year courses at university proved to have too much chemistry, calculus and other subjects which I did not excel in. I did not see a plant all year in first-year biology (only some amoebae and the like).
Changing course, I followed a friend into visual communications, learning typography and photography. My B.A. completed, I worked in graphic design for a number of years. These were the years when graphic designers depended on actual manual layout, pasting type onto paper spreads, and cutting overlays to line up for the pictures. At university my professor had said computers would never provide the quality of the work on our drafting tables. He could have never imagined today's printing scene!
After a bit I still felt unsettled and I decided that it was time to leave Edmonton to pursue something different. I spent a half-year living near Amsterdam participating in a student exchange program to learn history, art history, and Dutch as a second language. After that I still wanted to go back to school for more. It was a choice between library science and landscape architecture. Long story short, I graduated from the University of Guelph with a Master's degree in landscape architecture in the early 90s. I soon came to realize that I was not compatible with office work. Again, I had learned landscape design on the drafting table and the landscape architect profession was turning to very user-unfriendly computer layouts. My landscape designs were mainly residential projects with homeowners and with local landscape outfits. These could be produced on my drafting board. I still do a few now and then, on my drafting board of course!
Early on, my whole life revolved around nursery plants and conventional landscape design. On a trip to Switzerland I realized that many of the landscapes there had exactly the same cultivars that I had learned about in Ontario. These were plants that are produced to be genetically similar and predictable in gardens. At Guelph we were told that these plants were the "palette" for our designs. This was the "seed" of my understanding of the commercial plant world, and a not-so-subtle difference between those plants and the ones found in nature.
At Guelph I hiked and trekked in many forests, regional parks and natural landscapes and they engaged my interest. My professor at the University of Guelph had asked if I had seen the prairie plants in Alberta when I had gone home to visit. A landscape architect was "naturalizing" areas in Toronto. This was another "seed" telling me that some landscapes were different and special. The "seed" began to sprout when I visited ancient forests complete with understory and intact mountain meadows (for example, forests in Waterton National Park and on Vancouver Island, and mountain meadows in Waterton Park, the Rockies, and Switzerland). These landscapes were nature's landscape design and they won out in comparison to anything man could design. They were the result of thousands of years of plants’ living in communities of dazzling beauty.
I continued to work in the conventional landscape realm for many years as this was the bread and butter of the time. In my spare time I visited the river valley and many local natural areas as I had done in Ontario. I did not know about 'forest bathing" but I knew that spending time in nature was important to me.
One day, as I was pursuing my interest in plants, I attended a lecture at the Devonian Botanic Garden, as it was called at the time. The talk was by Cherry Dodd of the Edmonton Naturalization Group (the precursor of the Edmonton Native Plant Society). I was intrigued and signed up to volunteer. I went on with life and quite some time later another volunteer called me and asked if I could help out at the John Janzen Nature Centre native plant demonstration bed.
This changed everything. My journey with native plants in the Edmonton area began around the year 2000 and still goes on today. The original John Janzen Nature Centre demo bed was taken out recently, to make way for the new Compost School, but I continue to tend the Muttart Conservatory demo bed. At Bunchberry Meadows (a Nature Conservancy and Edmonton and Area Land Trust property) I tend one of the beds we have set up there. I grow native plants in my yard for ENPS plant sales and spend hours in the winter seasons cleaning native plant seeds. Since the formation of the ENPS I have been on the board. Learning from the many people who have crossed my path in the native plant sphere has been rewarding. Field trips are one of my favourite activities, especially the ones to local prairie remnants. I love seeing the many changes in these landscapes throughout the season.
At the beginning of my native plant journey we could barely give native plants away. Today we see sold-out native plant sales, and we are encouraged by young people eager to see change in the approach to both the urban and rural landscapes. Sadly, our human time frame is measured in decades, not in thousands of years. Native plants in an urban landscape provide an oasis in the desert of architecture and lawns. We need more of these landscapes which feature native plants where they are not destroyed when the homeowner moves on. We can hope for the growth of this aesthetic and an understanding that native plants do matter. This is not to say that native plants in our yards do not make a difference right now. When pollinators started visiting and insect drama started happening in my yard I was very pleased. It is just that we need to save and/or attempt to create lasting native plant landscapes that will be preserved for future generations. As I always remind myself "one plant at a time...” I am encouraged that each plant is introducing someone somewhere to a culture where we value and include these native species. We also need to continue to rally for legislation that protects exceptional landscapes where native plants live. These landscapes are worth far more than the initial sale of the subdivision houses that are slated to be built on them. In most cases they are "priceless".
In closing. I encourage everyone to get out into the landscape and experience native plants close up. Nature is not just a drive-by experience. Take time to cherish it.
Editor’s note:
Liz’s point about the need for native plant gardens or restorations to remain permanent or “in perpetuity” is an important one; the loss of the John Janzen Nature Centre demo bed is a case in point. What happens when homeowners with native gardens sell up, or the originally enthusiastic creators of a school or municipal bed move on? In part, the answer may lie in hedging our bets and using more obvious, permanently protected public sites, but it may also lie, as Liz says, in developing a culture where native plants are valued for their intrinsic worth and so are less likely to be abandoned or destroyed at the earliest convenience! There are signs that this trend is happening, and it’s ENPS mission to advance it!
