Vancouver Island Trip - Butchart Gardens

Butchart Gardens is a 55-acre setting full of more flowers, plants, trees, shrubs and ponds than you will see anywhere else in Victoria or on Vancouver Island (I think). Victoria is proud of its flowers and it seems everyone has a green thumb. Butchart is the culmination of their love of flowers.

They have formal rose gardens, Italian gardens, Japanese gardens, and ponds everywhere. They even have a small cove where seaplanes drop off visitors from other islands or tour groups - and where a lone sailboat can come for the day to dock and visit.





Datura in full bloom. When we visited New Orleans a few years back (1 year before Katrina), the teenagers were making a tea of this flower and being rushed to the hospital. They wanted to get high and, instead, got almost dead :(









Froggie pond

I was going to do this as a slide show but seems the "easy way" to do it no longer works and it wouldn't work for me with the instructions (I really am not that computer illiterate, it just wouldn't work after I did everything they told me to do!)




There were fuscia flowers in all colors and sizes all over in the Italian garden, along with a hedgerow and statuary.





























The entrance to the Japanese garden and a lovely pond with water lilies and a waterfall.








































A lone sailboat in the cove.




And a rhythmic fountain in a pool that also held an otter who splashed and swam around, finally coming out to the shore to sun himself.

























Someone has to plant the seedlings!

















And these are just a few of my photos - just imagine what images Jerry got!