You can see lots of formal gardens -- the ones people pay professionals to design. But what about our other gardens? The ones belonging to Canadian immigrants? Well, the answer is: they're on display at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Gerda Wekerle, an environmental studies professor, and photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo have put together a show of 41 colour, and black and white photographs documenting gardens and gardeners from 18 different cultures in Toronto. Photos are on display in the ROM's Heritage Gallery of Canada's Peoples until January 2002.

Wekerle says her interest in gardens began when she was a little girl and a bombed-out war refugee. "One of my earliest memories...I was perhaps three...is of my mother and me planting lettuce in a small allotment garden in Heidelberg. It was a question of having something to eat."

Since then the York prof has always put in a garden wherever and whenever she had land. "I want to explore how gardens change the way in which people relate to each other because they are conversation pieces."

Photo: Vincenzo Pietropaolo