Shade Garden

Dutch elm disease

In Flore laurentienne, published in 1935, Marie-Victorin described the American elm as "the loveliest tree in northern North America".

But that was before Dutch elm disease arrived in Canada in about 1940 and thousands of elms planted along Montréal's streets and in its parks had to be destroyed.

The Shade Garden lost its roof of greenery. Elsewhere in the Botanical Garden, some twenty trees, including a hundred-year-old elm next to the parking lot, were saved by fungicide injections at the base of their trunks. But only a few of the 35,000 trees that had once graced the city survived.