8. Allan Gardens + Conservatory - 19 Horticultural Avenue

This wonderful conservatory, known as the Palm House, was built in 1909. Over the decades more greenhouses were added to it and now it’s a wonderful labyrinth of flowers, palms, tropical vines, cacti, succulents and even a turtle pond. The last greenhouses were installed in the mid-2000s when they were moved from their original location on the University of Toronto campus on the northwest corner of Queen’s Park and College Street, making way for a new school building there. It’s a great place to visit on a winter day.

This Park was donated to the Toronto Horticultural Society by its namesake and Toronto’s eleventh mayor, George William Allan, in 1858, and assumed by the City of Toronto the following decade. It’s one of the oldest parks in the city and today is often the site of LGBTQ events given its proximity to Church Street.

Apart from the village and town clusters, in the mid 1800s Toronto as we know it today was largely made up of estates owned by wealthy families. George William Allan’s father, William Allan, owned the estate where Allan Gardens and the surrounding neighbourhood are now and named it Moss Park. Like most of the estates, it was later subdivided and streets were laid, but the Moss Park name lives on in the nearby neighbourhood to the southeast.