Finally the post on Butchart Gardens

I will skip all the excuses as to why it took me so long to post this and cut straight to the story since it is pretty long. It all started about 4 years ago. My roommate then, Anju, went to Victoria and came back with a souvenir gift for me - a calendar with pictures of the Butchart Gardens. It hung on my wall the next year and each month I got to see what the various sections of the garden looked like. Often I kept turning back to the picture of the sunken garden.

The Sunken Garden


So whenever Sunit asked me my dream destinations ( he regularly checks my list, since it is everchanging), the one place that re-appeared again and again (besides the English countryside) was the Butchart Gardens at Victoria.

All of my trip to Seattle, while I enjoyed all the National Parks, I kept looking forward - imagining what the gardens would be like at this time of the year. As luck would have it, our bus driver told us that the tulips were in full bloom and most of the garden was looking amazing. I was excited.

As we approached the gardens on the bus I saw a beautiful lawn with tulips in full bloom. Our driver announced as I went click - click on the camera - "This is just the experimental garden, the main garden is further up". We stepped down from the bus and eagerly walked in.


Path laden with daffodils

After I had my fill of clicking pictures of the tulips outside, we took this path laden with daffodils and found our way to the sunken garden. And our jaw dropped. To think that Jenny Butchart had started off this garden to beautify a barren limestone quarry...about 50 or so odd feet below us, it had creepers of different kinds growing on the sides, a path to the side with a couple of trees on each side and different areas where tulips were in full bloom. We took in the view and walked further.

The Ross Fountain

Most of our time was spent here, but we finally made our way to the Ross Fountain. The water rose pretty high providing a great display. We then turned around and after passing the weeping willows and a cherry blossom tree, made our way to the rose garden. The roses, however, were not in bloom, leaving us something to look forward to when we visit next.

The Weeping Willows

And the cherry blossom tree

The Japanese and Italian garden were next on our list. But on our way to the Japanese garden, we came upon a hole in the bush which provided this magnificent view of the Butchart cove, straight out of some painting.

The Butchart Cove

The tulips in the italian garden were more strong colored and seemed to go well with the flowers in the window boxes.

The Italian Garden

We spent about 4-5 hours at the gardens taking in all the many splendored sights and colourful flowers. We left only when we started to feel hungry. I looked back at the gardens as our bus left, I knew I would come back again someday.

Comments

Anonymous said…
lovely snaps - these flowers were just instant cheer for me! I particularly loved the pic of the "perfect tulips" in your earlier post :)
and why are they called 'sunken gardens?'
3:03 AM
Mridula said…
The place looks enchanted! Loved the picture of the fountain.
9:58 PM
Pooja Aggarwal said…
Charu,

It is called Sunken Garden because it is 50 ft below the ground level, since it was built at the site of a barren limestone quarry.

Thanks for visiting.

Mridula,

I was indeed enchanted by the place.
9:37 PM
Sigma said…
Beautiful pics !! As always :-)
11:41 PM
Vj said…
Wonderful account of such a beautiful place. The flower look so vibrant and the fountains add to the aura of the place . I visited a very good park last month which is sure to feature in my coming post .

well the wait was worth it ..lokking for more
3:31 AM
Anonymous said…
Feeling really jealous .. me also want to visit these gardens asap !!!!

I especially loved the weeping willows picture. Somehow it reminded me of Hamlet and could just picture a sad Ophelia walking under these trees.

These gradens can be the perfect backdrop for many a hindi movie songs :)
8:55 AM
Pooja Aggarwal said…
Thanks for visiting Shalini, VJ and Vibha.

VJ, waiting to read your post on the park

Vibha, Not sure if you remember but we used to have a story in our english lit class on the weeping willows - I think it was set in China or Japan and it was a love story with a tragic end.
5:26 PM
Anonymous said…
Yup, thanks for reminding. I was thinking hard as to where I had read about willows for the first time ... and then thought coz we had also read hamlet in school so maybe it was there :)
11:00 PM
Mridula said…
Pooja where have you vanished :)
1:14 PM
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