Pitiful Planting

The Butchart Gardens is a beautiful attraction located in British Columbia, Canada. With six different gardens to explore, these grounds don’t disappoint. The garden’s unique history, breathtaking scenery, and stunning landscapes make it one of the most beautiful botanical destinations in the world.

The garden originally started as a rock quarry, owned and operated by Robert Butchart. Robert Butchart was a pioneer in the early twentieth century that worked in North America’s cement industry. Robert, who had previously resided in Ontario, Canada, migrated to British Columbia because of his interest in the region’s rich limestone deposits. In 1904, Mr. Butchart had settled his quarry and cement plant at Tod Inlet on Vancouver Island. The location made it ideal for the quarry to supply cement to up and coming cities and towns down North America’s west coast.

Robert Butchart’s wife, Jennie, was the company chemist. But Jennie’s interest spanned past the company’s work in the quarry. As the quarry became a giant hole, depleted of the limestone it once had in abundance, Jennie started adding plants to bring back some beauty.

Soil was brought by a horse and cart from a neighboring farmland. As Jennie’s work continued, it eventually evolved into what we know today at the Sunken Garden. This, along with the sweet peas and rose bushes outside of the Butchart’s home, was the beginning of a soon to be magnificent attraction.

During the following years, 1906 through 1929, Jennie and Robert expanded their garden. The three newest additions were: the Japanese Garden, near the waterside, the Italian Garden which had taken place of the couple’s tennis court, and the Rose Garden.

Mr. Butchart was proud of the garden his wife had created. And even though Jennie is the one to be credited with the garden’s origin story, Robert did add his own touch. Robert Butchart had a great interest in birds, for he collected species from all across the world. Along with the birdhouses he scattered throughout the grounds, he also kept ducks and peacocks.

Jennie and Robert eventually passed down the garden to their grandson, Ian Ross. Ross was gifted the grounds on his 21st birthday, and after his service in World War II, he continued to add to the grounds. Ian worked hard within the garden for 50 or so years. It was under him that the garden became an interest for international travelers. He made the garden more self sustaining and added the summer symphony concerts as well as the variety stage show. In addition, Ian got a fountain in his name, the Ross Fountain, which was constructed in 1964 for the garden’s 60th anniversary. He also commenced the Magic of Christmas, one of garden’s five seasons. Ian died in 1997 but can be remembered through his accomplishments within the garden and throughout it’s history.

Ian’s son, Christopher, took over the garden’s productions in 1968. In 1977, Christopher started the firework display. The new event occurred during Saturday evenings in the summer months of July and August.  The show wowed visitors more every year. Even today, 40 years after it’s original performance, it still continues to augment the garden’s experience.

Christopher Ross passed away in 2000. Today, the garden is succeeded by Robin-Lee Clarke. Robin, the great granddaughter of the Butcharts, still continues to take care of, and add to, the garden like the many before her. Her addition to the grounds was the Children’s Pavilion, which she added in 2009.

As of 2004, Butchart Gardens was officially labeled as one of Canada’s National Historic sites. Unfortunately, the only original construction from the garden’s previous cement factory is it’s chimney, which can be seen when overlooking the Sunken Garden.

Today, Butchart Gardens hosts 900 different plant varieties and is home to over 1 million bedded plants. Naturally, as the garden continued it’s expansion throughout the generations, it’s number of annual visitors rose as well. During the 1920′s, an estimated 50,000 people visited the grounds a year. Today, Butchart Gardens receives roughly one million visitors throughout the seasons.

Written Sources:

The Butchart Garden Official Website 

Photo Sources:

Rock Quarry Photo via hikebiketravel.com

The Butchart’s home via butchartgardens.com

The Ross Fountain via wikipedia.com

Hello everyone! If you actively read my blog you may remember me saying about 2 weeks that I would be away on a trip to visit a garden. Well, now I’ve arrived back at home and I can say that the trip was absolutely marvelous! Posts regarding my trip and the garden I visited will be up within the next week or so. Before I write about that though, I want to share a little bit about the additions I made to my garden right before I left.

The weekend before I started my vacation (Saturday June 10 and Sunday June 11) my family and I put together an amazing raised garden. There was a rather large area of deadish grass that made for the perfect spot to host the garden atop it. The garden is two different tiers and consists of 3 different sections, each being 8 feet long by 4 feet wide. I constructed the structure using twelve 8inx8in Planter Wall Blocks, ten 2inx6inx8ft wood planks and eight 2inx6inx4ft wood planks (or four 2inx6inx8ft boards cut in half) which is all available at The Home Depot. Each brick was about $3 and the price of wood varies on the type you get, but overall the total price was pretty fair for the amount of space you’re going to have.

Once everything got home we started to put it together right away. One thing I really liked about the materials is that they fit together really nicely and are quick to build. I started assembling the garden on the furthest most left side. I laid down two of the blocks and put one of the 4ft planks between them. From there I started to build outward (starting left and constructing towards the right), using two of the 8ft planks, one on each side, stabilizing them with blocks at the end. I continued to do this until I had three, level sections. After my sections were finished I added a second layer to the two outside sections making them twice as high as the middle section.

After the wood and blocks were all placed I got ready to put in the soil. Because there was so much space to fill, I laid down a layer of wood mulch beforehand to take up some of the empty space and then proceeded to put in the soil afterwards. 

For the section on the far left, I wanted to transfer my beans and pea plants into it so I placed three large, flat metal arbors in the middle to support the plants so that they could climb up it as they continue to grow.

After the arbors were in I threw in specialized soil for vegetable growth and then I replanted my pea, lima bean and green bean into the garden. In the corner I put my eggplant plant and on the backside I had my corn and bell pepper sprouts.

In the middle section, the most shallow section, I planted all my pumpkin. These plants looked the worst after the replant because their roots had not yet adjusted which led to all their leaves to droop. But luckily, within the next couple days most of them perked up and even started to show new growth.

The section to the furthest right, is full of all sorts of leafy greens. This is where I replanted all my lettuces and other greens like spinach, kale and more. 

After everything was planted, I sprinkled in some plant food, crushed eggshells and fresh coffee grounds into the garden. Once everything was good to go, my dad and boyfriend helped me hammer in posts so that I could put up a little fence around the garden to keep out squirrels and our dogs.

Hello everyone! I’m going to try and keep this post short but there is a few things I would like to make note of regarding my blog, garden and summer schedule.

First off, I apologize for the slight inactivity. This past week was my last week of school and I was busy with finishing up our last assignments. I planned to write a blog mid week but unfortunately, I caught the flu and had very little motivation to do anything but rest.

On a more positive note, I have some wonderful ideas in store for my blog and garden in the future. As some of you may know, I started this blog for a school project, and even though it’s summer now, I would still like to continue it. I mentioned some ideas I had for my blog in a previous post (which you can read about here) and would like to bring up a few more things in this post as well. 

Before I move too far along, I want to mention a few things to look forward to in the month of June:

First, I have been working on a big garden project all weekend and am very excited to share about it in a future post. I’m trying to get to it within the next couple days but it may be posted at a later date.

Secondly, I am leaving for a trip this week and will be visiting a very awesome garden while I’m away. I am not going to release too many details yet but I plan on doing two posts on it, an informational & historical post and a discussion post on my experience while visiting there; similar to what I did for The LA Arboretum (links: historical and my visit).

Now, looking farther ahead, this is my rough game plan of what’s gonna change with my blog and what’s going to stay the same. 

I’m pretty content with how my blog has been so far but I have considered ways to improve it. One thing I would like to add more of is progress pictures. I take photographs of my garden’s growth regularly but only share a select few. I would like to have a more solid timeline to look back at, so there will definitely be more pictures. Also, I would like my gardening blog to expand past just my garden. I know lately it’s been mostly progress and update posts, which I really enjoy writing, but I would like to have posts about tips and other info relating to this topic, similar to how I wrote in November, December and January. Writing posts like that was a little more work because I do have to conduct research, but I feel like I got a lot of it. And finally, I’m going to try to visit (and write about) different botanical gardens.

So what’s staying the same? Over the summer I do have some regular scheduled activities, but I’m going to try and stick to a schedule still. I want to get AT LEAST one blog posted a week. I do plan on including more photos, so the posts may be more frequent or they may just be included in a week recap. As for the length of the posts, it will vary on the topic.

Thank you to all who read. I know sometimes the posts get a little long but I try to keep the posts interesting. And expect some wonderful blogs within the next couple weeks!