Butchart Gardens
Interesting facts
- Jennie Butchart had trained in chemistry and worked as a chemist for her husband's cement company before she ever turned to gardening.
- To soften the bare quarry walls, Jennie Butchart is said to have dangled over the edge in a bosun's chair, tucking ivy into the crevices by hand.
- The family named their house Benvenuto, Italian for welcome, and over the years Jennie gathered more than 900 varieties of plants.
- Robert Butchart collected ornamental birds from around the world, keeping a parrot in the house, ducks on the Star Pond and peacocks on the lawn.
- In 1939 the Butcharts gave the gardens to their grandson Ian Ross as a present for his 21st birthday.
- A bronze wild boar called Tacca, a Florentine cast of Pietro Tacca's 1620 statue, has a gleaming snout from visitors rubbing it for luck.
- Miles of underground cable were laid in 1953 to light the gardens at night, marking their 50th anniversary.
- Himalayan blue poppies have grown in the Japanese Garden since the 1920s, and in 1994 the gardens were granted their own coat of arms.
- The gardens inspired the landscaping of the Canadian pavilion at Epcot in Florida, which opened in 1982.
Why it is worth it
The Butchart Gardens began as a hole in the ground. Robert Pim Butchart, a cement manufacturer from Ontario, came to Tod Inlet on the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island for its limestone, and in 1904 he and his wife Jennie settled beside the quarry that fed his works. When the stone ran out, Jennie Butchart decided to make a garden of what was left. From 1909 tons of topsoil were brought in by horse and cart to build beds on the bare rock, ivy was tucked into the crevices of the grey quarry walls, and by 1921 the worked-out quarry had become the Sunken Garden, the heart of the place to this day.
The Sunken Garden is best seen first from above: a bowl of lawns, flower beds and trees laid out on the old quarry floor, enclosed by cliffs that were once a working face of stone and are now curtained in green. It is still the largest section of the gardens and an early, remarkable case of turning an industrial wound into something beautiful. Nearby, the Ross Fountain, installed in 1964 for the garden's 60th anniversary, throws its jets high into the air.
The rest of the 22 hectares grew around it in stages, as a series of separate rooms. A Japanese garden was laid out with the help of Isaburo Kishida, a landscape designer from Yokohama who was in the area from 1907 to 1912; an Italian garden replaced the family tennis court in 1926, and a rose garden followed in 1929 with some 2,500 plants of 280 varieties. For the centenary in 2004 two 30-foot totem poles were raised in the gardens, and in the same year the gardens were designated a National Historic Site of Canada.
The gardens have stayed in the family, passing down to Jennie's great-granddaughter, and now draw more than a million visitors a year. In summer the evenings bring music and fireworks over the lawns. A hand-carved carousel, opened in 2009, has its own pavilion.
Getting there
The gardens are at 800 Benvenuto Avenue in Brentwood Bay, about 4 km from the centre of Central Saanich and 22 km from downtown Victoria. Victoria International Airport (YYJ) is about 13 km away by road; from there buses 87 or 88 connect with route 81 at McTavish Exchange. From downtown Victoria, BC Transit bus 75 runs from Belleville Street near the Empress Hotel in 50 minutes to an hour; by car, take Highway 17 north and exit at Keating Cross Road, which leads to Benvenuto Avenue. Route 81 also links the gardens with the Swartz Bay ferry terminal. Parking is free.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Butchart Gardens is a floral display garden in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada, located near Victoria on Vancouver Island. The gardens receive over a million visitors each year. The gardens have been designated a National Historic Site of Canada.
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