by Chuck & Diane Brady

anada’s Butchart Gardens is absolute proof that you can make a silk purse out of a sows’s ear! This world-famous garden, in this most British of cities, Victoria, B.C., was once a limestone quarry and cement factory; a lone smokestack remains in the midst of one garden to remind us of what once was.

Robert Butchart, a successful cement manufacturer from Ontario, started a cement factory and limestone quarry here at Vancouver Island’s Tod Inlet. In 1904, as the limestone quarry became less productive, Mr. Butchart’s energetic wife, Jennie, began importing topsoil from nearby farms and spread it on the bottom of the now abandoned quarry. Little by little, under her supervision, it became what is now the Sunken Garden, with the smokestack standing as a silent sentinel.

Fortunately, Robert was very supportive of Jennie’s work, and the gardens expanded. The Butcharts traveled extensively, and the sights they experienced gave rise to the Japanese Garden, the Italian Garden (that replaced their tennis court), and the Rose Garden (that replaced the kitchen vegetable garden).

“…in the long twilight, we strolled hand-in-hand along the many paths …”

Robert collected ornamental birds from around the world, putting ducks in the Star Pond, peacocks on the front lawn, and even a curmudgeonly parrot (is there any other kind?) in their house.

By the 1920s more than 50,000 people came each year to experience the beauty that Jennie Butchart had created. The friendly, outgoing Butcharts named their estate Benvenuto (Italian for welcome). Today, over a million people visit each year.

The gardens are open year-round, and each season offers a changing view of them. We saw them in early July when they were at the peak of their summer grandeur and daylight extended until nearly 10 p.m.

After an early dinner in the beautiful Dining Room (which is located in the Butchart’s former home), we enjoyed a lovely concert by a local band. Then, in the long twilight, we strolled hand-in-hand along the many paths that wind through the gardens.

It is difficult to decide which of the gardens is the most beautiful, so we didn’t even try — each has its own beauty, and trying to place one above any other is as inconclusive as trying to compare apples to oranges.

In spring the gardens begin to burst forth with new growth after the rather dark winter months — narcissus, tulip, alyssum, forget-me-not, flowering cherry and dogwood trees, lilac, rhododendron — the list goes on and on and on! And each seems to shout, “Look at me! I’m the most beautiful!”
On summer Saturdays there is a fireworks display as soon as it gets dark. And after the fireworks there is a one-half-hour concert by the magnificent Aeolian pipe organ which once graced the Butchart’s mansion.

One popular attraction is the life-size bronze boar located near the gift shop. While most of its body has the dark patina of aged bronze, the snout is bright and shiny from people rubbing it, presumably for good luck (people do that to the bronze bull near New York City’s Wall Street).
Each afternoon the Dining Room features that most British of eating rituals, High Tea! It includes, among other things, Cornish pasties, smoked salmon tea sandwiches, and a decadent array of desserts. After this, one certainly doesn’t need dinner.

Butchart Gardens is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with many special events, including a reunion of as many former employees of the past 100 years as they can find.

Butchart Gardens: tel. 866/652-4422; .

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