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919-550-3793 / cenelson917@gmail.com / Clayton, N.C.
The following is an unpublished magazine article about Butchart Gardens in British Columbia, Canada. I visited the gardens in September 2009 and wrote this for publication the next spring or summer. I also shot the photographs.
The Sunken Garden at Butchart Gardens, British Columbia, Canada.
By Christopher E. Nelson
It's the scene just beyond the back wall of Victoria Island's Butchart Gardens that draws everyone's interest. Most will find later that their point-and-shoot digitals don't do justice to the charming sight of sailboats on Butchart Cove spied through a keyhole opening in the trees.
But no matter. Even the most hapless shutterbug will come away with plenty of beautiful photos from a pleasant day among the 55 acres of this Canadian national treasure.
Butchart Gardens, across the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver and the site of this year's Winter Olympics, offers a genteel respite from the rugged, outdoor-adventure orientation of the largest island on North America's west coast.
The grounds at Butchart present six formal gardens and scores of additional beds, ancient trees - including Redwoods - shrubs, fountains and lawns that add casual elements of surprise around the many bends of the walking path. From the subtle bog garden to the elegant Japanese garden, and the explosion of the sunken garden as it appears from the head of the staircase above it, plantings are designed to provide blooms in each of the five seasons (add Christmas to the four you're thinking of).
"A lot of people think (spring) is the most spectacular season here because everything is fresh," says Daphne Gardner, group sales manager at the gardens. "There are tulips, we do thousands of tulips, and daffodils and rhododendron. Lots of color. It is pretty spectacular."
Jennie Butchart, wife of pioneering cement magnate Robert Pim Butchart, began the gardens in a played-out limestone quarry adjacent to a cement factory and the couple's home in 1904. Today, the revitalized pit is the centerpiece sunken garden, complete with a stand of quartz at its center that was left when mining ceased at the turn of the 20th century. By 1908, Jennie had overseen the installation of a Japanese garden designed from memories of the couple's travels in the East, and later an Italian garden replaced tennis courts and a rose garden grew where the kitchen's vegetable patch had been.
By the 1920s, Jennie Butchart's gardens drew 50,000 visitors a year. As the 20th century turned into the 21st, Butchart Gardens remained in family hands and had long established itself as one of Canada's top West Coast attractions. Today the National Historic Site doesn't release figures but, "We do say we have close to a million visitors per year," says public relations director Graham Bell.
A visit for the self-guided garden tour should take the typical tourist 90 minutes to two hours, Bell says. Home gardeners or other plant buffs could find themselves endlessly fascinated. Bell says he's read blog posts by visitors who returned the following day.
Butchart's 50-plus staff gardeners plant close to 1 million plants each year, "that is if you include the 300,000 bulbs that are planted each fall," says Director of Horticulture Richard Los. "All of the annuals and biennials are grown on site, as we are quite specific on the level of quality that we tolerate, and we are extremely specific on the varieties that we need for our ever-changing displays."
Los says they change 20 to 30 percent of the garden displays annually by introducing new plant varieties and removing underperformers, or by changing plants or color combinations just to maintain their own interest. Often, an altered color scheme here means new plants there as a domino effect takes hold.
This year, Los and his team are removing daylily varieties that are susceptible to the gall mite and replacing them with resistant or immune varieties. In the rose garden, sick or disease-prone plants are continually replaced with stronger, disease-resistant varieties. Over the past decade, they've renovated shrub and perennial borders, and worked to improve soil and growing conditions, such as irrigation and drainage
The typical visitor to Butchart Gardens can expect to spend 90 minutes to two hours on the garden tour. They might also take advantage of either of two restaurants, a coffee shop and the seed and gift shop.
"Throughout the garden, one of our guiding philosophies is to plant the right plant in the right location," Los says. "Our mandate is to provide displays that are unique and inspiring to our visitors with an ultimate goal of drawing visitors from around the world to share in this beauty."
In addition to the garden tours, Butchart Gardens presents nightly concerts during the summer and fireworks on summer Saturday nights. In winter, there's ice skating in addition to opulent Christmas decorations.
For children, the Rose Carousel, with its menagerie of 30 animals, opened in December in the Children's Pavilion and is the only carousel on Vancouver Island. Robin Clarke, the Gardens' owner and great granddaughter of Jennie Butchart, hand-picked the carousel animal designs in consultation with Rosa Patton Ragan, a North Carolina artist who specializes in carousel and carousel animal restoration. Ragan led restoration of the antique Dentzel carousel at Glen Echo Park, a U.S. national park near Washington, D.C.
An opening in the hedge reveals picturesque Butchart Cove.
During the summer, hourly boat tours leave Butchart Cove, the coastal waters photographed by so many visitors through the opening in the border trees. ("Everyone seems to like that hole in the hedge," Gardner says. "Sometimes you can't even get near it.") The 45-minute tours focus on the wildlife and history of Tod Inlet, including the old cement factory whose dock pilings and chimney still stand.
Across the strait, Vancouver is truly one of the great cities of the world. It offers tourists trendy nightlife, upscale dining and shopping, world class museums, and even professional sports (the Vancouver Canucks; hockey, of course). Vancouver also has the third-largest Chinatown in the Americas, where lively open-air markets thrive today beside historic reminders of the immigrants' trials in the new land. The metropolitan area is easily navigated via a new light rail system and additional public transportation, and the city's center is eminently walkable.
Much of Vancouver Island is protected as parkland, including Pacific Rim National Park, which makes up a long stretch of its west coast. The island is bisected by mountains and, from coast to rocky coast, boasts rain forests, marshes, meadows, rivers, lakes and beaches in one of the world's most diverse ecosystems. Tourists flock to the region for its premier whale watching, birding, and salmon and trout fishing. Drives up either coast offer the occasion to visit picturesque small cities and towns that, like the entire region, embrace the history and culture of the First Nations, as the indigenous people are called, as well as the British who came later.
Butchart Gardens is in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island's Saanich Peninsula about 14 miles north of Victoria, British Columbia's capital and an attraction in its own right at the southern tip of the island. For visitors to Victoria from the States, likely by ferry or cruise ship out of the Seattle area, the gardens are a simple side trip. Those coming from northern points on the island, such as Nanaimo, the island's second-largest city, would do well to hop off of Highway 1, the TransCanada Highway, at Mill Bay and grab the ferry to Brentwood Bay. The three-mile ride, billed as "Vancouver Island's most beautiful shortcut," is infinitely more pleasant than the stop-and-go traffic that greets drivers north of Victoria.
The Butcharts' former residence houses a pair of restaurants - one that promises a "decadent lunch with innovative dishes built around local island-raised food" and a kid-friendly cafeteria-style eatery - plus a coffee shop and, of course, a large seed and gift shop. Smaller concessionaires occupy the central courtyard in warmer months. An admission ticket is good all day and discounts are available for next-day returns, so you can devote as much time to the gardens as you want.
Add a meal, high tea or just coffee and a pastry to your tour, then a run through the gift shop and a breather to watch the crowds on the courtyard, and it's the kind of day vacations were meant for: get a little easy culture in a picturesque setting, eat, shop, hang out.
Butchart Gardens
800 Benvenuto Avenue
Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada
www.butchartgardens.com
Open 9 a.m. daily, 1 p.m. Christmas.
Admission rates for adults, children and groups (25+ adults) fluctuate with the seasons.
Major credit cards accepted.
Mill Bay-Brentwood Bay Ferry
BCFerries
www.bcferries.com/schedules/mainland/bbmb-current.html
Approximately hourly, Monday-Saturday; no ferry on Christmas and New Year's Day. First ferry of the day leaves Mill Bay at 8:05 a.m.; last ferry of the day leaves Brentwood Bay at 5:55 p.m.
Cash or traveler's checks only.