Butchart Gardens, National historic garden in Central Saanich, Canada
Butchart Gardens is a floral display garden at Brentwood Bay on the Saanich Peninsula, about 23 km north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. Its 5.26 hectares centre on the Sunken Garden, a former limestone quarry whose sloping beds of red, pink, yellow and white flowers are divided by a pale winding path. Upright conical trees and rounded trees stand behind the plantings, and a lower reservoir holds dark water lit at night, ringed by a low stone rim and tall trunks.
Jennie Butchart began transforming her husband's exhausted limestone quarry in 1904 by bringing in soil and planting thousands of specimens to create the Sunken Garden. The family expanded the site over the decades with additional garden sections and eventually opened it regularly to visitors.
The gardens are named Benvenuto, Italian for "welcome", after the Butchart family home. Mr. Butchart kept ornamental birds, including a parrot in the house, ducks in the Star Pond and peacocks on the front lawn. Summer brings jazz and classical concerts, and on summer Saturday evenings firework shows are set to show tunes.
The site opens year-round with longer hours during summer months from June through September, while winter months offer shorter visiting windows. The winding paths cover varying terrain with inclines and stairs, so visitors should wear sturdy footwear.
The old quarry walls of the Sunken Garden rise 21 meters (69 feet) high and form natural terraces that were originally cut to extract limestone for cement. Approximately 700,000 annual bedding plants are set out by hand each year to create the rotating color compositions.
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