Road Trip Day 7: The Beauty of Butchart Gardens

Our last day in Victoria was reserved for a visit to a very famous garden.  Butchart Gardens is the place to go for visitors to Victoria.

Years ago, my in-laws took me and my husband, as a college graduation gift, to Seattle and Victoria.  The year was 1998, and I was finishing up the last semester of my horticulture degree.

Flush with my new knowledge of plants and horticultural practices, I was especially looking forward to visiting this beautiful garden. Fast forward 17 years later, I was excited to go back.

My mother and fellow travel companion.

Immediately upon leaving the parking lot, we were faced with fragrant, yellow wisteria that draped over an arbor.

Walking a few steps further, was another splash of color with anemone flowers in pinks, purples and white.

I hadn’t even gone through the entrance and I had already taken a number of pictures – it was going to be a veritable photographic feast!

Like most areas in Victoria, colorful hanging baskets could be seen all over the garden.

Butchart Gardens are over 100 years old and were created by the Butchart family.  Almost one million visitors come to visit this special place, which sits about 30 minutes outside of Victoria.

Today, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite areas in the garden.

Garden art is tastefully spread throughout the garden, usually in the form of animals.

One of my favorite color combinations is the bright green, spiky foliage of iris and its vibrant, purple flowers.

One of the many things that I liked was that the trash receptacles had plants growing on top.

I really think that this was a great idea.  Imagine trash cans acting as the base for plants that add beauty. I love it!

Here are a couple more…

The garden is separated into several smaller gardens. My favorite is the Sunken Garden.

This spectacular garden was created in a former quarry.

A long stairway leads to the bottom of the garden and winding paths invite your to explore more.  

It was interesting to watch the people exclaim over the beauty of the gardens many were from other countries including Australia, China, Great Britain, Japan and Spain plus the good old U.S.A.

Because I had visited the gardens before, I didn’t feel as if I had to hurry in order to be able to see everything.  Today, I decided to walk slowly through my favorite parts.  As a result, I spent most of my time in the Sunken Garden.

At the end of the Sunken Garden is a lake with a ‘dancing’ fountain.

Different variations of spray patterns made onlookers stop for a few minutes to enjoy the dancing waters.

After climbing out of the Sunken Garden, I strolled through other areas of the garden on my way to the Rose Garden.  

Blankets of flowers surround, what I believe are crab apple trees.

Love the black bearded iris, don’t you?

Brightly-colored dahlia.

Clematis growing up on an old stump.

There is one flower in the Butchart Gardens that is a favorite of many.  This is the Himalayan blue poppy.

You can find them scattered throughout the gardens and their vivid blue flowers attract everyone’s attention.

They aren’t easy to grow.  To get them to germinate, you need to place the seeds in a moist paper towel and put in a Ziploc bag. Then you place the bag with the paper towel and seeds and stick in the refrigerator (in the vegetable crisper) for 4 weeks before planting.

There are blue poppy seeds available in the and I bought two packages to try to grow them in my own garden.  

There are several water features scattered throughout the gardens and I liked this one with the three fish, encircled with colorful anemone flowers.

The Japanese Garden is not to be missed.  I love the varying shades of green and contrasting textures.

As you can imagine, it takes a lot of work to take care of many garden spaces within Butchart Gardens.

Watching these young girls working, planting new annual flowers, reminded me of the years spent as a horticulturist on golf courses.

These are but a select few of the 319 photos I took of these truly stunning gardens.

I hope you enjoyed them!

Before leaving Butchart Gardens, a visit to this special place isn’t complete without rubbing the nose of the ‘mascot’.

This is ‘Tacca’, which is a bronze replica of a wild boar – the original was created in 1620 in Italy. ‘Taco’ is named for the sculptor who made the original.

It is said that if you rub his snout, you will have good luck.  So, millions of visitors have rubbed Tacca’s snout over the years.

After leaving the gardens, we drove onto get on the ferry to Vancouver, where we will embark on the next adventure of our trip.

More to come tomorrow!

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."