 Two one hundred year old apple trees anchor a border featuring a rainbow of hellebores combined with a collection of wonderful companion plants.
Surrounding a heritage cottage, under ancient apple trees is a garden that combines extensive collections of hellebores, cyclamens, snowdrops and euphorbias with other perennials, including wonderful foliage plants, and shrubs to create layered artistic borders of year round interest.
Complimenting the ambiance of the home and garden are carefully selected containers and art. The enthusiastic gardening couple that have created this exquisite garden still find time to volunteer at Government House and with an international seed exchange program.
|
 As part of your customized fall tour spend some time with us in the world famous Butchart Gardens. The year 2004 was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Butchart Gardens.
In one of the first gardens developed, the Japanese garden, we see in our temperate Northwest setting, the fusion between the Edwardian influences of Jenny Butchart with the traditional Japanese garden design of Isaburo Kishida. This gifted landscaper came from Yokahama Japan at the age of 65 to work on this and other Japanese style gardens in the Victoria area. (ask about our customized tour featuring his gardens). Fall provides us with a kaleidoscope of foliage colour for the Japanese art and architecture (some dating back to the time of Mr,Kishida) and Jenny Butchart’s rustic Edwardian structures.
The origin of Butchart Gardens as the restoration of a limestone quarry is seen in the use of faux bois cement features here and throughout the other display gardens.
|
 Government House Gardens are part of the estate of the Queen’s representative to the people of British Columbia. These gardens are designed and maintained by volunteers from Victoria’s gardening community. Join us for an escourted tour through the lush and fragrant winter/early spring plantings that start to come into bloom as of mid-January. The exuberant perennial borders feature plantings have been designed to provide year-round colour and texture. An extensive rockery on a natural rock outcropping overlooks the ocean while the fragrance of a herb garden with it formal tapestry planting featuring Mediterranean herbs beckons you on. Walk through drought-tolerant plantings including native plants while viewing out over a native Gerry Oak meadow to the vista of the Streight of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountain range.
|
 The largest, intact Edwardian gardens in Canada are to be found on this historic, 565-acre estate now called home by Royal Roads University. Thanks to the efforts of the Friends of Hatley Park Society and the University the estate has now been named a National Historic Site.
Nestled in an old growth forest, the Hatley Castle is adjacent to the Esquimalt Lagoon and the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Olympic Mountains of Washington State on the horizon. This majestic setting provides the perfect backdrop for a range of beautiful gardens including a four acre Japanese garden, designed by Isaburo Kishida, who also designed the original Butchart Japanese gardens, a formal, walled, Italian terrace garden featuring many of the original urns and statuary, a bog garden as well as an Edwardian roped and walled rose garden. Additionally, you will find expansive perennial borders.
|
|
Victorian Garden Tours loves to escourt our visitors through Abkhazi garden, a beautiful heritage garden established by Prince and Princess Abkhazi over fifty years ago. This is truly an enchanted place with a garry oak meadow, glacial rock outcropping, magnificent vistas. Throughout there are wonderful plant combinations incorporating both native and exotic plants. We enter the garden through the gate into a wonderful grove of heritage rhododendrons which have been pruned up. Under the graceful branches there is a carpeting of groundcovers combined with other shade loving plants. Throughout the year there are treasures to discover as you wander through this inviting woodland along meandering paths. Upon leaving the woodland you arrive in a garden room with an inviting lawn area where you can sit on a beautiful crafted bench backed by the majestic rhododendrons and surrounded by deeply layered mixed borders. Leaving this area you pass under a historic Abies pinsapo glauca planted by Prince Abkhazi and enter upon a magnificent glacial rock outcropping featuring three ponds and a range of alpine plantings including historic conifers. This rockoutcopping looks over a lawn designed by Princess Abkhazi which leads up to a summer cottage under a canapy of magnificent garry oaks. Our galleryof pictures of this beautiful garden is currently under construction. For more general information and historic information please visit the Abkhazi Garden website by clicking here! |
|
|
|
|