Margaret Clegg of Ashton, Ontario, has been one of COG Ottawa’s hardest working members since she joined the organization in 1981. A gardener by inclination and education, she has earned herself the reputation as Eastern Ontario’s foremost composting expert. On behalf of COG, Margaret has given countless demonstrations, workshops and talks on composting all over the region.

Margaret practises what she preaches. No one looking at her rural garden today would guess that the one-hectare lot is officially classified as grade seven land, the poorest soil there is. Within a couple of years, she had changed a borderline gravel pit into a fertile garden with her secret weapon – compost. "The first thing I did, even before the foundation was dug for the house, was start a compost heap," she says.

During a typical composting demonstration, Margaret shows her audience how to build a compost heap. First she discusses which substances can be successfully composted as she displays small dishes of the standard compostable materials found around the home and yard: egg shells, dog hair, manure, vegetable peelings and so forth.

Then she makes a compost heap in a large jar, starting with coarse stems to let air circulate. Layer by layer, she adds different substances, inserting aerating material between some of the layers so the pile will decompose properly. In a second jar, she shows what finished compost looks like: odorless, crumbly, rich-looking – more like soil than garbage.

As a clincher, she likes to bring out a chunk of hard, dry clay soil and drop it on the table. After it shatters into smaller hard pieces, she announces that this is just the sort of soil that was on her property when she bought it in 1985. Then she produces a sample of what the soil is like now – dark, rich, soft and friable.

Margaret was born in England, and her parents moved to Philadelphia when she was a baby. From the first packet of radish seed she planted in grade one, she was hooked on gardening. "I never wanted to study anything else but horticulture," she recalls. She loved every minute of the two-year course she took at the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture, now a part of Temple University. Emphasis was put on chemicals in the course; compost was mentioned but little used.

After graduating in 1937, Margaret moved to England where she met, was courted by and eventually married William Clegg. With the onset of World War II and the birth of their three children – John, Barry and Dianne – she found little time to work until her youngest was five. Then she started as a garden consultant, continuing to work in that capacity until she left England in 1980, a couple of years after her husband’s death, to join her sons in Canada.

Margaret’s interest in organics was first piqued by a wonderful English garden that was maintained with well-rotted manure and no chemicals whatsoever. She read Sir Albert Howard and began experimenting with compost heaps, learning from her mistakes when the heaps ended up too wet or too hot. "After that, I never used a chemical again," she says.

Even though Margaret is a gardener first and foremost, it was COG Ottawa’s Farming Day conference which first drew her to the organization. "I very quickly got involved and was asked to do composting talks," she remembers. "COG has been great for me. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about nutrition and particularly about the health of plants."

And Margaret has been great for COG! For many years, she served as a member-at-large on the chapter’s coordinating committee which met monthly to oversee activities and projects. In 1990, she was instrumental in starting up COG Ottawa’s demonstration garden at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, doing most of the planning and planting. She has been in charge of the garden’s compost bins and has worked regularly in the garden to maintain it. In 1990, she received COG Ottawa’s Volunteer of the Year Award for her many contributions over the years and particularly for her work on the garden.

In the summers of 1992 and 1993, Margaret hosted three garden walkabouts, open to the public, at the demonstration garden. During these short tours, all about two hours long and held at different points throughout the season, Margaret would go over the garden with the participants, explaining the various organic techniques being used and answering questions. "We’ve had pretty good attendance at those," Margaret says.

In January 1994, Margaret underwent a major heart operation, from which she is still recovering, more slowly than she would like. As a result of this, she was not able to be active in gardening last summer, either in the COG garden or her own. At home, with her severely reduced gardening time, she found that creeping thyme got out of hand in her large herb garden. However, she was still able to grow a year’s worth of vegetables for herself with minimal effort, thanks to composting and mulching.