North America 2024
Day 8: Friday 02 August 2024
Victoria – Butchart Gardens
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island. These amazing gardens were created by Jennie Butchart, whose husband operated a limestone quarry for his cement business. In 1909 the quarry was exhausted and Jennie converted it into a sunken garden.
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island. In 1939, the grandson of Jennie, Ian Ross, took over the gardens and managed them till his death in 1997. In 1953, miles of cable were laid to provide illumination at night. The gardens receive a million visitors a year.
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island. The Gardens are designated as a national historic site. Ownership remains with the Butchart family, and the managing director since 2001 has been the Butcharts’ great-granddaughter Robin-Lee Clarke.
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island. Around the gardens are many bronze statues and fountains of animals, birds and fish. This dragon statue was a gift from Suzhou, China, the sister city to Victoria.
It is August, and the floral displays are at their most splendid in Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island.
Knowledge Totem outside Parliament House, Victoria. Carved by Cicero August and his sons of the Cowichan Tribes, for the closing of the XIV Commonwealth Games in 1994.
Fisherman´s Wharf, Victoria. Walking distance from Victoria town centre, this quaint docking area hosts tourist entertainment and restaurants, while remaining a living, active dock for fishing boats and leisure craft.
Fisherman´s Wharf, Victoria, reminding us that, like Lewis and Clark in 1805, we have reached the Pacific Ocean.
This goldfish pond greets visitors at the entrance to Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island.
Totem, Victoria. There is a magnificent display of these bringers of good fortune outside the British Columbia Museum.
Andrew at Butchart Gardens
Inside the Empress Hotel
Travel Diary
Soon the view changes from suburbia to countryside, showing signs of dry weather in brown grass. After 3 hours in the gardens, we take a bus back to town, and stroll around the bay to Fisherman´s Wharf. Here we enter a tourist restaurant area, but the wharf is well-used still by leisure and professional craft, with weather-beaten fishing boats lining the many jetties. Next we walk around the headland, past the numerous large hotels, to where we have a view south across the Juan de Fuca Gulf to Washington State´s Olympic Peninsula, with its high mountains rising dramatically from the sea across the strait. This is where Cindy used to live,and where we will be in a few days.
We alight from the bus behind the museum, where there is a series of large erect Indian totems. Then we return to the bay and docks to have a meal at an outdoor eatery (cod and fish for me, taco for Cindy), with a great view of the Parliament House and the docks, with the many water taxis scurrying to and fro. As the sunsets, we walk around the streets, catch some Irish live music in a pub, and enjoy the lively nightlife of the city starting up.
Butchart Gardens are well deserving of their reputation, particularly this summer season, being splendidly maintained by a team of 50 full-time gardeners and 20 seasonal. The million visitors come to enjoy the million seedlings lovingly prepared across the large estate, which includes fountains and a menagerie of statues, a children´s pavilion, with a carousel, light shows, fireworks and musical entertainment. We stroll around, luckily it is not too hot, with the many other visitors, and are amazed by the care and variety of the many plant species, and the glory of the colours and views the variant landscape provides.