Artist Showcase: Benj Rowland 

Artist Showcase: Curated Gardens features curated seed collections by select Canadian artist gardeners. Meet the artist in their garden.

The purchase of Benj's seed collection comes with a CD of his album Community Garden. Thank you Benj for your art and your love of nature.

Benj Rowland is a talented Canadian folk artist who makes music and prints. He is a seasoned multi-instrumentalist who has toured with the likes of Joel Plaskett and Al Tuck, and was the singer songwriter for the popular folk-duo Mayhemingways. Benj put out his first solo album Community Garden in 2022. 

You can catch him performing across Canada, playing accordion with Peterborough's Pays D'en Haut and Ottawa's Vanier Playboys. If you listen closely you might hear his hurdy-gurdy droning with the wind through the Gatineau Hills. 

In the garden, he grafts fruit trees and roots berries, picks wild apples and grows food to stock the winter pantry. His seed collection comes with a CD of his inspiring album Community Garden

  . 

WWW.BENJROWLAND.COM

A word from Benj 

I am a supporter of allotment gardens and availability of public space for people to grow things in the dirt. I named my last recording Community Garden !

Here's my wish list of seed from the Junco Catalogue. It's hard to pick just 9. I hope you have a great gardening year with these fun plants. 

*** My first pick was Joanne's Millbrook Garlic, but it's not available year round, so I was asked to pick something else. This is my mom's variety; she says she got the seed from a friend of hers and it was elephant garlic. It seems to have shrunk over the 40 years my mom has grown it. All other garlic is wrong to me. 

1- St-Hubert soup pea. I made quite a bit of soup with these this winter and now I always want to have some in the pantry. You'd have to grow a pretty big plot to keep stocked up though. 

2- Scimitar snow pea. Another pea - I like peas cause you can plant them early. It's exciting. 

3- Burley tobacco. This tobacco is easy to cure, just hang it in a shady shed til next spring is what I say.

4- Hollyhock. Reminds me of my grandma. 

5- Canteen Gourd. Dreaming of making instruments with these, or other things? 

6- Cucamelon. I've been wanting to try these. 

7- Petrowski turnip. If you grow turnip you're recession proof I heard. 

8- Amish Paste tomato. I like to can tomato sauce. This is a good one for that, it's bigger and easier to grow than San Marzano type I think. They're juicier though so more water to evaporate if you want a thick sauce. 

9- Aunt Molly's ground cherry. Nice to have around.