The Butchart Gardens - Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Flower & Garden Magazine, Dec-Jan, 1994 by Ellen Henke

Asked to imagine a Canadian garden in December, your mind may conjure up images of snow mounds and stark, ice-covered tree branches. But visit Butchart Gardens near Victoria on Vancouver Island between December 6 and January 6 and you'll feel as though you've stepped into the scene of a traditional Christmas card. On these particular crisp winter evenings, the gardens are highlighted with colored lights and festive decor. Carolers stroll through the grounds providing musical entertainment to complement the holiday season.

However, the 50 cultivated acres, located within a 130-acre estate located just north of Victoria, provide a spectacular color palette of flowers from March through October. Even at the height of the growing season, hundreds of colored lights are hidden among the flowers, providing one of the largest illumination spectacles of its kind in North America. From the exquisite Sunken Garden to the charming English Rose Garden and the spectacular Ross Fountain, the illumination "show" magically transforms the entire Butchart Gardens into a place of enchantment on summer evenings.

The Butchart Gardens have been a part of the Victoria landscape for 90 years. Visitors find it hard to believe that this stunning garden was a limestone quarry less than a century ago. Robert Pim Butchart began accumulating his fortune from the manufacture of portland cement in the early 1900s here. Part of the price for his success, however, was a gaping scar on the land. Fortunately, Butchart's wife Jenny saw the opportunity to make a garden.

Equipped with the right combination of horticultural knowledge, enthusiasm, money, artistic sensibility and the labor from the cement company's work crew, she began converting the site into one of North America's most ambitious formal gardens. The topography of the quarry provided Mrs. Butchart ample room to create several theme gardens that reflected the Butchart family's world travels, including the Japanese Garden, the Italian Garden and the English Rose Garden.

The Japanese Garden, sculpted with cement forms that accent the slopes going downward to Butchart Cove from the house lawn, was the first of the formal gardens. Magnificent copper beeches on either side of the red lacquer Torii gate and the maples at the top of the path represent the horticultural antiques of the Butchart plant collections. Although many details and accents of the Japanese Garden have been added in recent years, they remain in harmony with Mrs. Butchart's original architecture.

Perhaps the greatest feature of Mrs. Butchart's handiwork is the Sunken Garden, inspired by a friend's casual dare. In 1908 the limestone supply was exhausted and the 3-1/2-acre quarry was abandoned. After hearing the remark that "even you would be unable to get anything to grow there," Mrs. Butchart was intrigued with the possibility of transforming the huge, ugly hole into a magnificent garden.

Two years later she planted Lombardy poplars, to camouflage the view of the cement factory, along with white poplars and Persian plums to enhance the scene. She planted ivy on the quarry walls in the little pockets of soil that were just adequate to support and sustain these plants. By 1912 work on the Sunken Garden was well underway.

A plan for drainage was developed and tons of topsoil was hauled in by horse and cart from nearby farmland to line the quarry bottom. With the help of an English landscape gardener, William Westby, Mrs. Butchart developed a plan for a pristine green lawn that would lead visitors through the Sunken Garden in such a way that allowed the best vantage points for viewing the colorful flower beds. Her eye for color and form was soon evident in her garden beds, which exist today as she designed them.

The view of the Sunken Garden is a breathtaking panorama of colorful borders and lawns. The huge boulder in the center of the quarry was cleverly converted into a towering rock garden. Stone stairs provide access to the top for an extraordinary vista of the entire garden. The main feature tree at the top and center of the mound is Arbutus menziesii, commonly known in the United States as madrone. This native evergreen tree self-seeded in that exact spot many years ago. Although Mrs. Butchart collected exotic specimens of trees and flowers from all around the world, she realized the value of this special volunteer and allowed it prime position in her garden.

Plants in the garden are not labeled, although you'll surely recognize many of them. Nevertheless, bring along a notebook when you visit and record your perspectives and questions. The Plant Identification Center, located in the former Butchart residence, is staffed to provide reference material and answer questions.

Toward the back of the Sunken Garden the environment and mood changes. Water reflections combine with the many annual and perennial flowers to create an impressionistic mood in a tranquil setting. Mrs. Butchart lined this deeper part of the quarry and allowed it to fill with water from a natural spring. In some places the lake is as deep as 40 feet; a tapped water main above the quarry creates an accompanying waterfall. The Ross Fountain, which was installed in 1964, shoots an endless array of intriguing water patterns, some rising up to 70 feet.