Places to Visit In and Around Cabbagetown: Gardens, Parks and a Farm

Most of Cabbagetown is private: streets of houses, front gardens and porches. The public places are around its edges, and they are what draw most visitors in. On the west, across Parliament Street, stands the glass of Allan Gardens. On the east, where the streets end, the ground drops into the Don Valley and Riverdale Park, with a working farm on the slope. To the north and east lie two Victorian cemeteries. Walking from one to the next is the best way to understand the shape of the neighbourhood.

Each place below has its own page in this guide with opening hours, history and directions. They are listed roughly west to east, in the order the heritage walk visits them.

Allan Gardens

A public park with a domed Palm House from 1910 and six greenhouses, free and open every day of the year. It stands in the block between Jarvis and Sherbourne Streets, a few blocks west of Parliament Street, so strictly it sits just outside Cabbagetown. It is the warmest place in the area in winter and the usual starting point for a walk. The Allan Gardens guide covers the greenhouses, the flower shows and permits for photography and weddings.

Riverdale Park

The big valley park at the eastern end of Cabbagetown’s streets, split by the river, the railway and the Don Valley Parkway into a western and an eastern half joined by a footbridge. The west side is quiet lawn and paths next to the farm; the east side has the sports facilities and the long view back to the skyline. See the Riverdale Park guide.

Riverdale Farm

A free, City-run farm on the site of the old Riverdale Zoo, with heritage breeds of farm animals and a barn built in 1858 and moved here in 1977. It is open every day from 9 am to 5 pm, which makes it an easy stop with children. On Tuesday afternoons in the warm months, the Cabbagetown Farmers Market sets up outside its gates. The Riverdale Farm guide has the details.

The Toronto Necropolis and St. James Cemetery

Two nineteenth-century cemeteries hold Cabbagetown’s edges. The Necropolis, on the valley rim at the end of Winchester Street, has Henry Langley’s Gothic Revival gate and chapel from 1872 and the grave of William Lyon Mackenzie. St. James Cemetery, opened in 1844 on Parliament Street, has the Chapel of St. James-the-Less. Both welcome visitors on foot. The cemeteries page covers their history, burials and gate hours.

Wellesley Cottages and Wellesley-Magill Park

Two small places near Wellesley Street complete the picture.

Wellesley Cottages is a short row of one-storey workers’ cottages built in 1887 on a lane off Wellesley Street East. Each has a steep gable facing the lane, the classic form of the Toronto workers’ cottage. They are designated heritage properties and private homes, so look from the lane and leave the residents in peace. The house styles page explains what makes a workers’ cottage a workers’ cottage.

Further west, off Homewood Avenue near Sherbourne Street, Wellesley-Magill Park is a recent addition: a quarter-hectare urban park completed in 2008 on the site of the former Wellesley Central Hospital. It was designed by the landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander with the firm gh3, with a grid of 42 London plane trees set in crushed granite and a 45-metre sculptural wall, “Forest Walk”, by the artist Ed Pien. It is small, quiet and easy to miss, which is part of its appeal.

Seeing them together

The walk map plots all of these places on one plan, and the where is Cabbagetown page shows how they sit around the neighbourhood’s boundaries. For ideas by season, from the winter flower show in Allan Gardens to autumn at the farm, see the seasonal activities page.