Canada: Vancouver Island, Victoria, Butchart Gardens, Whale Watching
Our family trip this year was to British Colombia. It was so incredibly lovely. My mom has wanted to go to Butchart Gardens forever as a kind of bucket list activity. It was pretty amazing that we could all go there together.
Lake Tahoe from the airplane
San Francisco airport attractions
My parents and my family flew up there together. It was not cheap, but we thought that was all the time we had. In retrospect we wish we would have drove, but at least we could help my parents manage everything. We ended up sharing a large rental car from Turo. It saved us a bucket of money because traditional rental cars were astronomically expensive. It was quite the day of catching a flight, catching a connecting flight, picking up the rental car, trying to get a Canadian sim card, rushing to make the ferry and getting over to Victoria. We drove late a night to a hotel in Victoria. I was really impressed that my mom made it through. It was just a day that had so much potential to go poorly, but it all turned out! It was a miracle. Mom felt well enough to travel. Our flights weren't delayed or cancelled. We were able to pick up the rental car and even made the ferry. As a bonus the hotel was so so nice.
I couldn't believe that my mom was able to get up the next day and do a full day of touring the gardens. That was incredible. Here is a little history of the gardens:
Robert Pim Butchart (1856–1943) began manufacturing Portland cement in 1888 near his birthplace of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. He and his wife Jennie Butchart (1866–1950) came to the west coast of Canada because of rich limestone deposits necessary for cement production.
In 1904, they established their home near his quarry on Tod Inlet at the base of the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island.
In 1907 Isaburo Kishida, a sixty-five-year-old garden designer from Yokohama, Japan, came to Victoria at the request of his son to build a tea garden for Esquimalt Gorge Park. This garden was wildly popular. Several prominent citizens, Jennie Butchart among them, commissioned Kishida to build Japanese gardens for their estates before Kishida returned to Japan in 1912.
In 1909, when the limestone quarry was exhausted, Jennie set about turning it into the Sunken Garden, which was completed in 1921. They named their home "Benvenuto" ("welcome" in Italian), and began to receive visitors to their gardens. In 1926, they replaced their tennis courts with an Italian garden and in 1929 they replaced their kitchen vegetable garden with a large rose garden to the design of Butler Sturtevant of Seattle.
Darcy matching the Azaleas.
One thing that particularly stood out to me was the amazing hanging baskets. These people really know how to do a hanging basket. I especially liked the Fuchsia. It was so fun to be there with my whole family.
Ellie sitting underneath a massive Dipelta tree.
We toured the Sunken Garden first. Wowzers. I don't know how many times I can use the word beautiful, but it really was. I was surprised to not really see any workers to speak of. I know that many blooms must take a lot of upkeep. Butchart Gardens has a team of 45 full time gardeners, 55 acres of gardens, 900 bedding plant variations, and 26 greenhouses. Even the parking lot was just beautiful.
But really though.
I wish Dahlias were perennials in Utah.
The Ross fountain was so fun to watch. It changed shape and spray. It was so peaceful to watch.
Such cool Alocasia leaves.
I thought this blooming dogwood tree was lovely.
Our darling Holland with some bright pink Begonias. Our girls loved all of the bright pink flowers.
There was a children's garden, and our girls loved the little statue of the carousel horse. They all had to have a turn on it.
Eliza and Holland decided to use their money for a turn on the real carousel.
This Angel's trumpet was huge.
Coast Salish Totem Poles
I thought this tree was way cool. Here is some info from finegardening.com: Monkey puzzle TREE, that is. This is one fascinating tree. The monkey puzzle (Araucaria araucana, USDA Hardiness Zones 7-11) is native to Chile and Argentina (the Andes, more specifically), and can grow up to 80 feet tall and 30 feet wide. It’s coniferous, and its cones can grow up to 6 inches long. We’ve heard stories of them being quite dangerous when they fall from the tree. The tree itself is a potential hazard if planted too near a heavily traveled area, since the scale-like “leaves” are quite sharp. No matter the danger, the tree is fascinating, though it’s not for small gardens. We spotted this specimen while touring gardens in the northwestern U.S.
The peony is called "Bowl of Beauty."
A dragon fountain for our dragon loving girl.
Which little boy is doing bunny ears? Sammy?
Everything is beautiful here, even the garbage cans.
The Rose Garden really was amazing. There were a lot of people around, so we ended up coming back in the later afternoon to browse more in peace.
My girls would regularly squeal and insist photos be taken of various roses. I only included a handful of those here. They are lovely though.
So many gorgeous roses.
The name and date were included on the labels, which was fun to check.
Quite the arbor
A tunnel of roses
Of course there are gorgeous hanging baskets on the tunnel of roses.
Roses of every color.
I loved this Mountain Laurel. I want to get one for our yard, but I think our soil is too alkaline.
The Japanese Garden was really cool.
Family photo in the Italian Garden.
Italian Garden and Holland's muscles.
After we made one round around all of the gardens we stopped for some ice cream. It was very unique, almost foamy. It was delicious though. I love this photo of our family enjoying the cones.
Check out how tall these iris are. More than six feet!
We played a game started by Miriam to find a rose that was created in the year that each of us was born and take a picture with it. Holland's rose was Our Anniversary created in Canada in 2015.
Valentine Heart, N. Ireland 1986
Graham Thomas, England 1983
Love Song, USA 2011
Miriam got a bonus: Ketchup and Mustard, USA 2011
Royal City Rose, Canada 2009
This has got to be Darcy's, but I can't see the label to tell what it is. I bet it was created in 2020 though.
Gorgeous color.
Sweet pea blossoms like never seen before.
The hanging baskets kill me.
I thought the Fuchsia blossoms were so cool.
Sometimes we ran into a bloom that had fallen down (we never picked any). They were fun to play with.
I love the bright begonias.
One more walk around the Sunken Garden
I am so glad my mom was able to finally come see this. What a wonderful day.
I thought this Chinese Lantern flower was really cool. I like the different layers and colors.
We wanted to stay longer and see the fireworks, but little Darcy was so done because she didn't get her nap that day. I still loved staying until the later afternoon/early evening because the crowds disappeared and the light was low and pretty. I love a beautiful garden.
The next morning we went to Victoria to go whale watching. It was Sunday and the downtown area was pretty deserted. We got there with some time to spare so we walked around. These totem poles were outside of the Royal BC Museum. I wish we could have had time to visit the museum.
Even the city of Victoria does beautiful hanging baskets.
The Statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Victoria Parliamentary Building.
On the other side of the street was the harbor where we were meeting the whale watching tour.
I couldn't resist getting a photo with the Canada sign.
Then we met up with the tour and were off. I had to hunt around to find a tour that accepted wheel chairs and babies, but I found one. Our boat had an interior seating area, which was really nice because it was rainy that day. I felt bad for the other tours out in the wind and rain. They still had outside seating if you wanted it, but the few people that stayed out there were totally soaked. We stayed inside while we boated out to where the whales were and then got out to see them without glass in the way.
It was a little chilly though, and John made himself a makeshift hat.
Eliza borrowed a rain jacket from Aunt Patti, which was really nice.
We never saw any breaches this trip, but we saw about 5 humpback whales come to the surface a bunch of times to breath and dive back down. You can see the humpback in this photo.
It was fun to see the tail come up as they dove down.
I swear these photos make it look like we were farther away than we really were. It felt like we were right there with the whales, and I was super excited.
One time I was the one who spotted the whale for the crew, and I felt very cool. :)
We opened up the poncho so Darcy could have some air in the front carrier.
This was the inside of the boat where we were protected from the elements. There was a marine biologist who gave us interesting information as we boated along. The only downside was that the windows kept fogging up with all of the people in there.
It was a fairly long boat trip out to the whales, so we had some dozers on the way back.
They stopped by an island to see the lighthouse, seals, and even a walrus!
I was hoping to see some orcas, but it didn't happen this time.
Later we made our way to the ferry to go back to the mainland and stopped at this sea glass beach on our way. It is actually called Glass Beach because it is so common there.
We had fun picking out a nice selection to bring home.
We took the ferry back to the mainland, but I just stayed in the rental car with sleeping Darcy. It was nice though that the car was parked right by a window where I could still enjoy the pretty scenery while I worked on my upcoming Relief Society lesson.
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