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Fanshawe Pioneer Village
Ezio's Garden

Ezio and Anna Maria Cucinelli have been volunteer gardeners at Fanshawe Pioneer Village near London, Ontario for a number of years. As members of Seeds for Diversity, they researched, planned and maintained a period vegetable garden for one of the Village's earliest residences - c1830. In the photo above, Ezio and his grandaughter stand at the garden gate, with a lush display of pole beans behind them.


Fanshawe Pioneer Village encourages their garden volunteers to grow period appropriate plants in the Village's many flower and vegetable gardens. Visitors learn about the decline in plant variety over the past hundred years and have the opportunity to taste fruits and vegetables, such as this early watermelon variety, that would have been well known to their grandparents.


Visitors enjoy learning about the early plants in the settler's cabin garden at Fanshawe Pioneer Village. Crops grown include pole beans, sorghum, Jerusalem artichokes, squash and corn, all staples which appear in accounts of early Ontario gardens in Southwestern Ontario.