Isabella Preston

Isabella Preston is hailed as the “Queen of Ornamental Horticulture.” She is widely known and respected for her extensive work in ornamental plant breeding. During her 26-year career, she produced nearly 200 new hardy hybrids of lily, lilac, crab apple, iris and roses for Canada’s cold climate. While female plant breeders were rather rare in her day, she quietly challenged gender bias and set the stage for new generations of breeding programs at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and elsewhere.

Biography

Isabella Preston was born September 4, 1881 in Lancaster, England. She helped her father on the family farm and attended a ladies horticultural college. In 1912 she moved to Canada, picked fruit near Guelph, Ontario for several years, and enrolled in the Ontario Agricultural College (now University of Guelph) where she studied plant breeding. Between 1912 and 1920 Preston was involved in breeding various vegetables, fruits and flowering plants including garden lilies. She gained international recognition by introducing the acclaimed “George C. Creelman” lily and became the first professional woman hybridist in Canada in 1916. She died on the 31st of December 1965 in Georgetown, Ontario.

Career

In 1920, (at age 40) she relocated to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and worked as a day labourer for the federal government at the Central Experimental Farm (CEF). Her work was noticed by W.T. Macoun, Dominion Horticulturalist, and she was soon offered the position of Specialist in Ornamental Horticulture. She was the first person to focus solely on breeding ornamental plants. She worked with lilies, lilac, crab apple trees, peonies and roses. She developed many of the 125 different strains in the Central Experimental Farm lilac collection. Her lilac and crab apple hybrids are also still seen flowering on the Central Experimental Farm each spring along with two of her roses. Her achievements include:

• The Preston lilacs - 52 varieties that were hardy and late-bloomers, many named for Shakespearean characters. Most of these can be seen in the CEF’s lilac collection today. (The varieties of lilac that were commonly seen in Europe bloomed too early in the Canadian climate and the buds or blooms were frequently nipped by late spring frosts.) Eighty of Miss Preston's late-blooming cultivars are recorded in the International Lilac Register although only about one-half of these were distributed to other institutions or nurseries. Cultivars ‘Audrey', 'Elinor' and ‘Isabella' received Awards of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society, London, England, in 1939, 1951 and 1941, respectively; 'Bellicent' was awarded a First Class Certificate in 1946.
• The Stenographer lilies series – named after the 7 stenographers working at the CEF at the time. These lilies had dark red or orange flowers that faced outward and upward, which was a unique characteristic for this type of plant. Five of the Stenographer series lilies won Awards of Merit from horticulture societies in London and Boston, and were widely distributed commercially.
• Fighter Aircraft lilies – named for second world war Allied planes
• Canadian Lake crab apples (or Rosyblooms) – 15 hardy crab apple trees with coloured leaves and pretty flowers named after Canadian Lakes. Some of these rosyblooms, planted as early as 1928, can still be found in the Arboretum and Ornamental Gardens at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa.
• Siberian irises - named after Canadian Rivers
• Preston roses – at least 20 hardy varieties, many of which were named after Canadian native tribes (Agassiz, Algonquin, Antenor, Ardelia, Caribou, Carmenetta, Chippewa, Conestoga, Cree, Erie, Huron, Iroquois, Langford, Micmac, Millicent, Mohawk, Nascapee, Orinda, Patricia Macoun, Ojibway, Poliarchus, Regina, Rosania, Sylvander and Valeria). While her roses never won her awards, they provided an excellent stage for the work of Dr. Felicitas Svejda who worked at the CEF from 1956–86 and became known as Canada’s rose expert.

Isabella Preston wrote numerous articles on various horticultural subjects, and in 1929 published Garden Lilies, the first book about lily cultivation in Canada. Upon her death in 1965, 139 of her gardening and plant books were donated to the Royal Botanical Gardens Library in Hamilton, Ontario.

Honours and Awards

A new hybrid species of lilacs was named in her honour “Syringa prestoniae” This was the result of a cross between wild species from China and put Canada on the lilac “map”. In 2005 the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa created the “Preston Heritage Collection”. In February 2007, Canada Post released two new stamps featuring a lilac variety developed by Ms. Preston. She was co-organizer of the North American Lily Society. The Isabella Preston Trophy was established by the North American Lily Society in recognition of her work. She received awards from many Canadian and international horticultural societies including lifetime memberships from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and the Canadian Iris Society. Notable awards include the Veitch Memorial Medal in Gold (Royal Horticultural Society, London, 1938), Jackson Dawson Medal (Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 1946), Lytell Cup (Lily Committee, Royal Horticultural Society, 1950), and the EH Wilson Memorial Award (North American Lily Society, 1961).