Mole Hill Community Housing Society

All photos were taken in August 2014.

Mole Hill Community Housing Society occupies the block bounded by Comox, Pendrell, Bute & Thurlow Streets, adjacent to Nelson Park in Vancouver’s West End. The Mole Hill Community Housing Society provides affordable housing for low & middle income people in houses dating back to the late Victorian era. Mole Hill is the highest point in the West End & is named after Henry and Elizabeth Mole, original settlers to the area. The City of Vancouver started buying properties around Mole Hill in the 1950s. Those houses were razed to create Nelson Park. The houses of Mole Hill were to be the next stage of the park’s creation. Friends of Mole Hill was formed by Vancouver citizen activists in response. They were successful in preserving these houses & having them converted to affordable apartments. The work was done between 1999 & 2003. Mole Hill Community Housing is a very pleasing urban landscape: vintage houses combined with attractive landscaping. While Nelson Park is not particularly interesting, a community garden is located there. This community is very near Davie Street in Davie Village, filled with shops & restaurants.  

VanDusen Botanical Garden

All photos were taken in August 2014

There is a lot to see at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver BC.  It's a more traditional botanical garden than the UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver, or the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle, which are more forested & informal.  VanDusen Botanical Garden reminds me of botanical gardens in New York & London.  The RHS Garden at Wisley comes to mind.  There is a beautiful visitor center, plant collections from Asia, the southern hemisphere including Chile, Australia & New Zealand, the Mediterranean, eastern North America, redwoods & other conifers including members of the cypress family, also lindens, maples, ashes, mountain ashes & rhododendrons.  The diversity of plants is quite amazing.  The are also interesting features including 5 lakes, a meditation garden, an Elizabethan maze, a tiny farm with vegetables, bees & medicinal plants. a formal rose garden, a rock garden, a fragrance garden & even more.  It's really quite a beautiful, diverse & interesting place, well worth a visit when you are in Vancouver.  The garden opened in 1975 & has had plenty of time to grow impressively.  It covers 55 acres (22 hectares) & is open every day of the year, except Christmas Day.  

UBC Botanical Garden & Centre for Plant Research

Kirengeshoma palmata (Yellow Wax Bells)

Rodgersia in the David C Lam Asian Garden

Eucalyptus coccifera 

Alpine Gardens

Physic Garden.  All photos were taken in August 2014.

The UBC Botanical Garden is a charming place to visit at any time of year.  The garden was established in 1916 at the University of British Columbia.  Plants of every type cover the garden more than 100 years later.  The David C Lam Asian Garden is forested with Asian trees.  Quite large Rhododendron of many species expand beneath them.  Areas near this garden are also forested with species of Acer, Cornus, Magnolia, Sorbus &  the family Styracacia from North America & Asia.  The Greenheart TreeWalk is suspended between the trunks of tall BC native evergreen trees.  The E H Lohbrunner Alpine Garden, with many small shrubs & rather few trees, is a stark contrast.  Xeric plants from around the world live here.  A pedestrian tunnel leads from the shaded forest to this sun-drenched part of the botanical garden,  Here you will also find a physic (medicinal) garden laid out in a formal pattern of concentric circles.  The entire botanical garden covers 110 acres.  Allow at least an hour to walk its many paths.

Nitobe Memorial Garden

 

All photos were taken in August 2014.

The Nitobe Memorial Garden covers 2.5 acres (1 hectare) at the edge of the University of British Columbia just above the Salish Sea.  The garden is one of the most beautiful Japanese gardens I have seen, not as fine as the Japanese garden complex in Portland, but perhaps better than the Japanese gardens in Seattle & Bellevue.  It's not a large garden, but invites you to linger.  The style is said to be Shinto.  It combines traditional Japanese garden plants with native plants from British Columbia.  The garden was designed by Kannosuke Mori, a professor at Chiba University in Japan & named after Dr, Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) an influential Japanese educator & diplomat at the League of Nations.  He studied in Japan, Germany & at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  He has no direct link to Vancouver, but died in Victoria on his way home from a conference in Banff Alberta.  Other nearby sites of interest to the public are the UBC Museum of Anthropology, the UBC Botanical Garden & Wreck Beach.

Butchart Gardens

Cafeteria & gift shop complex near the entrance

3 photos above of the sunken garden, the main part of Butchart Gardens

The rose garden.  All photos were taken in August 2014.

Butchart Gardens is the principal tourist attraction on Vancouver Island near the city of Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia.  It receives over 1 million visitors a year. It is the tackiest garden I have ever seen. The fact that it is a huge garden makes it all the more difficult to bear. In August, it was very crowded with tourists. And to top it off, it cost more than $30 per person to enter.  I suspected I might not like it, but felt I must see it at least once. I had been to Victoria at least 5 times before & never gone. It was mostly filled with annual bedding plants in the style that was popular in the early 20th century. These same plants are used over & over again in different combinations. It looks best from above & at a distance.  The main part of the garden was created between 1909 & 1921 in an old limestone quarry. Other gardens were added later. There is a reasonably interesting Japanese garden, as well as less interesting Italian & rose gardens. The Italian garden displays the same endlessly repeated bedding plants in a formal design.