After a couple of strenuous days with hikes and heavy lifting, I thought a leisurely day wandering in the botanical gardens might be nice, particularly since there was potential rain in the forecast, and being near the mountains increased the probability we’d end up in it.
Van Dusen Gardens isn’t that far, but it’s not at the base of the North Shore Mountains, where I live, and the sky was a little lighter that way, and even sowed some blue patches.
I haven’t been to the gardens in years, not since last attending the annual plant sale…which I now realize hasn’t happened for the past two years….I am not sure why. It’s not a bad thing, at least not for me, since I can’t seem to help myself but load up on plants that I increasingly have nowhere to put!
The water features and little (and big) ponds make me want a bigger property with the option to do a bigger aquascape than we currently have in our yard.
The Van Dusen Gardens has a hedge maze….not a terribly big one, and not a terribly difficult one to make it through. It’s not as complicated or huge as the ones I remember transmitting when I visited England and France in high school, but it still had enough twists and turns and blind alleys to make it entertaining.
What I love about the gardens is seeing such magnificent examples of so many amazing plants that one doesn’t realize can be grown here, with a little love and attention. Like this massive planter filled with pitcher plants. I’ve tried to grow them before, and while one hung on for a few years at the condo, the results were certainly not like this!
And the delphinium’s! Just WOW! The size, the beautiful white to purple spectrum, and the simple yet effective support system made of bamboo poles.
Spiky things, like sea holly, globe thistle, and even Devil’s club were spotted around the grounds.
Historical totem poles, and modern art that gave a hint at the scale of the trees that were removed from the area in the early logging days.
One thing that I wanted to pick up on leaving the Van Dusen Gardens, was a packet of Angel’s fishing rod seeds. Sadly, it was one of the few missing on the rack. Since we weren’t all that far from UBC, I turned the truck towards my Alma Mater’s campus and we had. second liesurely, and much less populated, stroll through the UBC Botanical Garden.
“UBC Botanical Garden is Canada’s oldest university botanic garden, established in 1916 under the directorship of John Davidson, British Columbia’s first provincial botanist. The original mission of the garden was research into the native flora of British Columbia. Over the past 100 years, the mission of UBC Botanical Garden has broadened to include education, research, conservation, community outreach, and public display of temperate plants from around the world.” (https://botanicalgarden.ubc.ca)
The UBC gardens are not as huge as Van Dusen, and it feels much more forested for the bulk of it, but it has a much more interesting alpine garden area, and the food gardens involve active education for students of the university. As an Adjunct Professor, I still have free admission to the grounds, which is something I really do need to take advantage of more often. The UBC Botanical Garden also has a really nice little garden shop with an excellent book section and a plant sales area that frequently contains unusual plants that been divided from some of the interesting specimens on the grounds. They also collect seeds from their plants and sell the packets to fund raise. And here, I found a packet of the seeds I was after. Happiness!
I did appreciate walking past this sign and seeing the amusing irony of a little white crowned sparrow sitting on top of a sign that said “Wren to build a nest?”. He sat there and stared back at us for a few moments, until we turned and left him be.
I live in an amazing and beautiful part of the world, and sometimes I forget to appreciate it. Sometimes it takes a friend flying across the country to visit to remind me that I need to take a step back from the frustrations of work and appreciate the wonder that this city on the edge of the sea and at the base of the mountains has to offer.
And I did not break my bestie this time around 🙃