The Butchart Gardens

VANCOUVER ISLAND BRITISH COLUMBIA

Four and a half thousand miles is a long way to go to see a rose garden  . . . but if you are lucky enough to be traveling to Canada’s West coast as my family and I were this summer then a visit to The Butchart Gardens - with over 100 varieties of hybrid tea roses alongside 400 grandiflora and climbing roses and 64 types of floribunda from all over the world is not to be missed.

The Butchart Gardens is now one of the world's premier floral show gardens, but it wasn’t always this way.

The site was originally a limestone quarry for Canadian businessman Robert Pim Butchart who in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s made his fortune making newly invented concrete - supplying  city engineers as they developed Canada’s West and the Pacific railroad.  He and his wife converted this limestone quarry on the Saanich Peninsula that supplied his business into one of the most revered formal gardens in the world.

We had only a vague inkling before we went that the gardens might be a good place to visit and had no idea that they contained such a great collection of roses. We went to see the Rocky Mountains of course; rising majestically from the plains of Alberta and British Columbia in the vast openness of the Canadian West they provide a striking backdrop to one of the worlds in places to be – Vancouver. 

But fifty miles off the coast is Vancouver Island – quieter, unspoiled, and friendlier and just 15 miles from Victoria (capital of British Columbia) is the gem that is Butchart Gardens.  We had a busy itinerary and I really didn’t expect to have time to visit but as luck would have it we drove straight past the signs to the Gardens on the way to the ferry at Swartz Bay.  We are so glad we stopped by.

Jennie Butchart – by her own admission knowing nothing about gardening, began to shape this magnificent landscape in 1904. She established, in the style of the grand estates of the period, several distinct gardens to evoke a range of aesthetic experiences. The then abandoned limestone quarry was transformed into the dramatic Sunken Garden, with ton after ton of topsoil brought in by horse and

cart from a neighbouring farm - an enormous undertaking. This, the spectacular Sunken Garden, was followed by the Japanese Garden in 1906 designed by Isaburo Kishida, an Italian Garden, and in 1930 the Rose Garden.

Alongside the roses there are over 1,000 varieties of other plants and trees, including dramatic massed plantings with 100,000 tulip bulbs planted each autumn by a team of over 50 gardeners. Each year over 1,000,000 bedding plants in some 700 varieties are used throughout the Gardens to ensure uninterrupted blooms from March to October.

I have been lucky enough to walk though some beautiful gardens - the Touileries in Paris, Isola Bella Gardens in Lake Maggiori Northern Italy, the Gardens of the Royal Palace in Bangkok and Alnwick Garden in Northumberland – one of my favorites in England, but Butchart, now enjoyed by over 1.2 million visitors each year is a really wonderful place. Travelers from all over the world walk reverentially around the stunning vistas and manicured paths, excited and awe inspired.

The renown of Mrs. Butchart's gardening quickly spread. By the 1920s more than fifty thousand people came each year to see her creation (18,000 cups of tea were served in 1915!) In a gesture toward all their visitors, the hospitable Butchart’s christened their estate "Benvenuto", the Italian word for "Welcome". To extend the welcome, 566 flowering cherry trees along Benvenuto Avenue leading to The Gardens were purchased from Yokohama Nursery in Japan and installed from West Saanich Road to The Butchart Gardens' entrance.

The garden became neglected due to shortage of manpower in the Second World War and with the Butchart’s in old age moving to Victoria it was left for their daughters to care for the estate.  But it was the Butchart’s grandson – R Ian Ross returning from the Navy following the War who inherited the gardens from his Grandparents and with his Chicago born wife Ann-Lee restored and developed the Gardens into the spectacle we see today.  Ian Ross was awarded the Order of Canada in 1992, he died in 1997 but the Gardens are still owned by the family.

Butchart has the large rose garden that is almost essential in any garden that seeks to draw large numbers of tourists. This one is just

stunning, blooming unceasingly from early summer into autumn, thanks to the beneficial climate of Vancouver Island, where days are sunny and mild and nights have the evening cool that seems to suit roses. Unusually very few plants are labelled but a few familiar names appeared: ‘Peace’, ‘Red Devil’, ‘Iceberg’, but most to me at least kept their identity secret.                                               

Climbing and rambling roses spill over trellises and arches and pergolas, and hybrid tea roses and floribundas grow in informal beds along walkways that permit closer inspection of any rose that catches the eye from afar. The warm afternoon air of late summer was fragrant with rose perfume

During the summer now there are concerts each night, and firework displays on Saturdays right after dusk but I like to think it’s the roses bring in the crowds. The attraction of the rose is world wide and with roses from all over the world Butchart should be reserved a special place in the heart of all rose lovers – it certainly has mine.

In 2004, its centenary, the Butchart Gardens were designated as a National Historic Site of Canada.                                                                                           

                                                                                Adrian Evans

Adrian Evans is the son of Roy Evans, the Chairman of the West Midlands Rose Society