You Pinspire Me
The Royal Botanical Gardens Lilac Festival in Hamilton was a big discovery for me a few years ago. Lilacs are a huge thing in my life. I grew up in the small city of Belleville, ON, that town that you drive through now to get to Prince Edward County when you’re going Wine Touring. I’ve always loved Belleville. It’s not a big city, but it’s a beautiful one. (Literally. For those of you who can’t remember your basic elementary school french, belle = beautiful, ville = city.) Our neighbourhood was on the edge of town and none of the insides of the city blocks had been developed yet, so we had lots of trees, bushes, & large piles of dirt leftover from the housing construction 15 years earlier in the middle of our block, behind all of our houses. What a fantastic place to grow up. 
Most of the growth (that wasn’t Manitoba Maples) in all of the undeveloped space in our neighbourhood was lilac bushes. Light pink, dark pink, deep purple, lilac, white…. When the weather hit that perfect temp in May and the lilacs started to open, our whole neighbourhood became heavy with the unmistakable parfum de lilas. My mom, sister, & I would head out the door, each armed with a knife or pair of scissors, over to our own lilac dell, and come back 15 minutes later with our arms overflowing with lilac cuttings. Every vase, mason jar, and juice jug in our house was called into action and there wasn’t a room in our house that wasn’t graced with at least two bouquets. I didn’t realize until I moved away to University how spoiled I was. Sure, there are Lilacs in Hamilton, but they’re all sitting on someone else’s property! You can’t just walk up and snip a few branches off. And they’re not everywhere. I can’t smell them when I step out of my front door. That makes me a little sad. 
I lived here in the city of Hamilton, Ontario for many years before I discovered the Royal Botanical Gardens Lilac Festival. It is, shall we say, Mecca for lilac lovers across the province. The Royal Botanical Gardens (or RBG, as we locals call it) are located on several different sites and include over 2,450 acres of nature sanctuaries. In the heart of the Arboretum site lies the Lilac Dell which, in turn, boasts of over 700 different varieties of lilacs. Seven Hundred! When the lilacs are blooming on weekends in May, the RBG hosts a sort of Festival – occasionally there’s music or food, and there’s always a Discovery Cart with info sheets and guides. You’re always encouraged to bring a blanket, a picnic, & a book, and unwind. At one point, it was more of an actual organized event, but I’m thinking that the very unpredictable springs we’ve been having lately made it a challenge to schedule. 
Walking down the hill into the dell, for me, is not unlike coming home from a very long trip. The fragrance is overwhelming. It takes me back to a much less-complicated life. The smell of lilacs is the memory of walking down the street hand in hand with my mom. It is the memory of laying in bed at night, anticipating my upcoming 10th birthday. It is the feeling of safety and security that you can only ever have as a child sitting on your mother’s lap. 
The year before my oldest child was born, I convinced my mom to come & visit us for Mother’s Day, and since that year, it has been our tradition to head out to the Royal Botanical Gardens Lilac Festival yearly. Some visits have been shorter than others, because of weather or cranky babies, and some visits have been later in the year than others, because of long winters or late frosts. Now that the fields & lilacs have been paved over & houses built in my mom’s neighbourhood, I love that we the Lilac Dell, and I look forward to spending full afternoons there as the kids grow older & run free to play. 
I now know that people around Ontario, Michigan, and New York drive hours to come and experience our wealth of lilacs, and it makes me all the more determined to make the most of them while we’re in this city. The lilacs haven’t started blooming yet, but keep your eye on the What’s In Bloom page of the RBG website – you’ll know as soon as they start to flower! 
Have you ever been to the Lilac Dell or any other site of the RBG?
Jenn vanOosten
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