Harrington Lake Diefenbaker suggested that he needed a quiet place to go fishing, not too far from Ottawa. Later that year, Harrington Lake was chosen as the site for an official country residence and the buildings were formally designated as a secure residence for Canada’s prime ministers. During the first prime ministership of Pierre Trudeau, his then-wife, Margaret, added a vegetable garden; according to Kim Campbell's autobiography "Time and Chance", the garden still provided the house with fresh produce at the time of that writing. Campbell was the only Prime Minister to have spent her entire term in office residing at Harrington
Harrington Park (homestead) the estate comprised 800 acres of cleared land, pasture and forest with crop paddocks and a vegetable garden near the house. A second driveway approaches the homestead complex from within the new suburb of Harrington Park, off Parkway Drive / Cobbitty Road/ Oran Park Drive to its north via the new suburb and off the Northern Road to the west. A series of farm dams to the house's south-east have been modified or lost with residential development although the small pond alongside the 1890s realigned driveway remains within open space. Today the garden retains many mature coniferous and other trees