Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
Over the course of its 100 plus years The Butchart Gardens have been pruned, shaped and groomed to an incomparable visual panorama.
There are lawns, of course, framed with flowers and trees.
Everywhere there are swaths of color. It’s an inspiration to take in such a vibrant springtime tribute to the beauty of living plants.
At one end of the Sunken Garden at The Butchart Gardens is a fine excuse to sit on a bench and be entertained. The Ross fountain is a mesmerizing water feature.
The fountain cycles through an amazing display of patterns. It was created and installed in 1964 for the Gardens’ 60th anniversary by the grandson of the Butcharts, Ian Ross. The family still owns and operates the Gardens.
The water flows through so many different movements it’s hard to know when a cycle has completed. Even with so much more of the beautiful gardens to take in it’s hard to pull away from this hypnotic view.
The Sunken Garden at The Butchart Gardens is probably one of the larger areas in terms of space. Like most areas in the gardens, anywhere a visitor looks from a pathway exposes a new area of panorama, either near or at a distance. Gardeners were out in force when we arrived in the morning, raking, pruning, and primping the grounds. Nearly a million visitors a year come to Butchart.
It rained the day before we visited.
Here’s the chief reason for our recent visit to Victoria: The Butchart Gardens. We’d never been there in spring and I was longing for tulips, lots of tulips. After winter’s grey palette, Butchart was an explosive celebration of spring.
The Butchart Gardens are 55 acres reclaimed from a limestone quarry and are designated a National Historic Site of Canada. They are the result of over 100 years of loving care and stunning design. The Sunken Garden I’m showing you today starts with a lookout (in the top photo). Ponds reflect some of the spectacular rhododendrons, willows, and other foliage in the shot above.
The gardens have paths that wind through beds planted with masses of flowers. In spring it’s daffodils, tulips, fragrant hyacinths, forget-me-nots, and more. Beautifully shaped trees and larger shrubs complete the picture.
I think I can honestly say that this is one of my favorite places in the world. I’ll show you more of these incomparable gardens in the coming days.
Canadian artist and writer Emily Carr has a permanent monument in Victoria on Government Street. As a mid-20th century artist, she was a rare woman to gain prominence and her interest in Aboriginal peoples was also unique in its time. Her love of nature is captured with exuberance in her paintings. She is portrayed here with one of her dogs and her monkey Woo. Carr’s home in Victoria, a boarding house that supported her in her later years, is preserved and open to the public during summer months. Those of us visiting Victoria when it’s not open can see Emily Carr on the street.
On this trip to Victoria we decided it was time to range further than our usual walks through the Inner Harbour. We explored the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, an art haven in the residential area of Rockland that’s just beyond the coverage of most Victoria tourism maps.
The gallery hosts an eclectic variety of Asian art, decorative arts, and a room showcasing legendary Canadian Emily Carr. It’s a relatively small gallery with a nice layout.
In an ongoing exhibition, “Emily Carr and the Young Generation,” the art career of Carr is presented in a chronology that traces her development as an artist, finishing with examples of work by younger artists she influenced. Check back tomorrow to meet Emily Carr.
The gallery is a more modern addition to the Spencer Mansion which houses administrative offices and is available for event rentals. Outside is an Asian garden with a Shinto shrine.
One of the prominent features in Victoria B.C.’s Inner Harbour area is the Parliament Building. The building is topped by a golden statue of Captain George Vancouver, the English explorer who surveyed the coastal Pacific Northwest and after whom Vancouver Island is named. Here you see Captain Vancouver peeking over the top of Parliament.
Variously called neo-baroque, Renaissance Revival and Romanesque Revival, the building was designed by Francis Rattenbury and completed in 1897.