Vancouver has a lot to offer: waterfront, markets, restaurants and history, but for me, the highlight of our few days there was the VanDuzen Botanical Garden.
The visitor center features exhibits, cafe and a ‘green roof’ that blends into the landscape and minimizes environmental impact.
It’s not a huge garden, but it seems so. I was stunned while writing this to discover that it’s only 55 acres, only three more than the gorgeous postage-stamp-sized Brooklyn Botanical Garden that is my near neighbor. Despite the size, it feels dense and complete, with many specialized gardens and displays.
Its history is also unusual: it’s one of the world’s newest major botanical gardens. Though you wouldn’t think so as you walk among its stands of large trees, it’s only just over 40 years old; its first 70 years were spent as the Shaughnessy Golf Course, providing weekend recreation for the wealthy home-owners in the Shaughnessy neighborhood developed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
Departure, by sculptor George Lundeen, outside the visitor center
By the late 1960s, many of its patrons were headed out to more suburban and grander courses, and the land was sold in 1970 to become the garden. From the beginning, it was decided not to develop a research program; as a result, plants were collected for appearance and interest, rather than to have a complete collection. Another aspect of no research: 9 full-time gardeners and 1600 volunteers staff the garden.
That said, for most of my life, I wasn’t a fan of visiting botanical gardens. I’m not really sure why…perhaps I felt embarrassed at not knowing the names of all the things I was seeing, or perhaps I was with companions who made me feel that way.
That’s by way of saying that in the past few years, they’ve become some of my favorite places to visit, even though I really don’t have much more of a botanical education than I ever did, although I recognize types and families of plants. And sometimes I have so many questions that I may not be fun to walk with.
But for me, the great pleasure of large gardens is not knowing a lot about the flora; it’s the masses of color, the exuberant variation of leaves and flowers, and shapes. It’s like walking into a food hall full of fabulous displays of bread, meat and cheeses. I can’t eat them all: the vision is nourishing.
And that makes it very hard for me when it comes to blogging about them, because I start the task with far too many pictures; over 200 in this case. And while there are a certain number of duplicates and duds, it’s still painful to trim and trim until there are only too many.
The task of selection–and I know it has to be done–means losing some of the sense of mass; eliminating four shots of a group of flowers and keeping one means jumping more quickly than I like to the next. And often, for me, the point is the subtle and not-so-subtle contrasts of color and shape, rather than the individual glorious flower.
Of course, there’s the occasional break from the beautiful to take in the curious; this tree is ominous enough to feature in a haunted walk or Halloween event.
There are a number of fountains, statues and pavilions throughout the grounds; the one above marks an area with Asian plantings…but I couldn’t include them all!
At a far end of the garden from the Visitor Center, there’s an edible garden exhibit, planted with fruits and vegetables we might find in a market, and some a bit more exotic than that. It’s also planted with signs that identify the plant, what continent it originated in, and how it’s used today. Note the peppers: originally from South America, but this variety is from the Balkans!
I’m not sure if these are ‘official’ livestock, or whether they just found the garden a good place to live and raise a family, but they walked right up to me as I sat on a bench and appeared to be curious about what I might offer.
And just for the end, because what’s a day without music: This piano is tethered just away from the rose garden.
If you’re in Vancouver and would like to visit, plan for an afternoon. The cafe offers a variety of foods at different price levels, run by a downtown cafe. Easy to get to by Vancouver’s bus and trolley system: the #17 stops at the Garden and connects in downtown with nearly every other.
