Edmonton has a rich and diverse horticultural history. Vacant lot gardeners, rose gardeners, and horticultural societies have helped to beautify Alberta’s capital city. The enthusiasm of florists, seedsmen, and plant breeders have also endowed the city with a distinct horticultural character. In this book’s nine essays, each conveying the ethnic diversity of horticulture, arboriculture and floriculture, readers will see how champions of natural landscapes, food production and private and public gardens model ideals for the urban future. Moreover, citizens, visitors and students of cultural history and urban design will enjoy the narrative skills embodied in Why Grow Here. From reviews: “...well-written, meticulously researched stand-alone essays that illustrate the long history of what [Kathryn Chase Merrett] calls horticultural optimism in Edmonton,Alberta, on the Great Plains’ northern edge. She interweaves major horticultural activities and the people who made Edmonton a garden city... Merrett traces a common North American horticultural story: a new settlement concentrates on survival and subsistence first, then slowly on beautification.... What makes Edmonton’s story a bit different? I think it is the passionate plant breeders (almost a who’s who of northern hybridists) who made it their life’s mission to create hardy roses to make Edmonton the “city of roses” (Edwinna von Baeyer, Great Plains Research, vol.26, no. 2).