Rosetta McClain Gardens

Rosetta McClain Gardens is a Toronto city park located on Kingston Road, just east of Birchmount Road on the Scarborough Bluffs.

It has many cultivated trees and gardens, but the most interesting plants are the wildflowers, located just outside the fence, and the best place to observe birds is at the birdfeeder on the next property to the east.

Besides the cultivated trees, there are a number of native species in the park, including soft maple, sugar maple, spruce, tamarack, sweet birch, and Manitoba maple.

The cultivated gardens are picturesque, even though they contain mostly non-native species, and the flowers provide nectar for monarchs and other butterflies. The non-native trees still provide cover and shelter for birds.

Species of birds which I have observed in or from the park include: blue jay, golden-crowned kinglet, chickadee, ring-billed gull, robin, grackle, house sparrow, pigeon, mourning dove, starling, killdeer, hermit thrush, winter wren, cardinal, dark-eyed junco, white-crowned sparrow, fox sparrow, tree swallow, crow, house finch, barn swallow, yellow-shafted flicker, Canada goose, red-breasted nuthatch, and downy woodpecker.

Because the Scarborough Bluffs were formed from silt washed down from a river in glacial times, rather than from solid earth and rock, the Bluffs erode considerably each year, and the park gets smaller and smaller on the lake side as a result. I have photographed trees there and, in subsequent years, they have toppled over the Bluffs and now even the land where they stood is no longer there.