About the plantation

Georges Bugnet a Rich Valley, lieu du site historique de la Plantation Bugnet Photo: Archives provinciales de l’Alberta

Bugnet Plantation – Sequence of Notable Events (Excerpt)

Bugnet homesteaded at Rich Valley (County of Lac Ste. Anne), west of Legal in 1905 (NE 28-56-3 W5). As with many other homesteaders, he struggled with farming, particularly due to killing frosts and the short growing season. He turned to horticulture, experimenting with plants hardy to the climate of northern Alberta. He obtained seeds from botanical gardens all over the world, having sent fifty letters in 1911, which at the time were posted with three cent stamps, requesting seeds of hardy plants and trees from countries with similar latitudes and climatic zones as that of his region of Alberta

Bugnet Plantation – Sequence of Notable Events FULL DOCUMENT Download

Bugnet plantation maps

Types of Plants

Ladoga Pine

This is the pine cone of the famous Lodoga Pine

The Ladoga or Bugnet pine is a Scots pine, whose origin was thought by Georges Bugnet to be from a plantation near Lake Ladoga, north of today’s St. Petersburg, in Russia, as he was never able to ascertain exactly the origin of the seeds that he had received from the Botanical Garden of Petrograd, sometime between 1910 and 1917. There was no reply to his letters asking for more information as the Russian Revolution broke out in February of that year. Foresters from Alberta’s forestry service were very interested in these fast growing trees and by 1933 were getting seeds from them. Scions of two types of trees from the Plantation have been grafted to some scots pine roots at the Crop Diversification Centre North (CDCN).,probably as late as the 1980s; there are about a dozen trees of each that are producing healthy thriving seedlings which we hope we can eventually plant at the Georges Bugnet Plantation Historic Resource Site. As the offspring of these scions were expected to be used for windbreaks, the branches were chosen from trees that were most characteristic of the scots pine, that its very reddish bark, and particular « dress » or shape. The intention was that these windbreaks be somewhat decorative as well. However these were never commercialised. We obtained some of these saplings last fall, and again this fall, and distributed them to our members and whoever wanted some. There are two youngsters growing at the University of Alberta Botanical Garden, which we obtained from the CDCN last year, two were also given to Olds College.