Hi GPODers!
We’re back at The Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island for one last look at Cherry Ong’s late winter visit (Be sure to check out the previous posts, if you missed them: Sunken Garden, Japanese Garden, and Spring Prelude Part 1). This spring has been a turbulent one in many areas of the country—with late frosts and snowfall along with temperatures swinging from unseasonably high to low—but no matter what your spring has looked like so far this year, we can all enjoy more of the bright color and lush layers of foliage from Butchart’s indoor displays.
A botanical garden’s conservatory is most often a humid haven of tropical plants, but the Spring Prelude transforms The Butchart Gardens’ indoor spaces into a wonderland of all types of plant life. In this area, cold-hardy woodies and putting on a particularly impressive show.
Even though these displays are completely indoors, the layout of the beds and structures incorporated throughout give the illusion of walking through an outdoor garden during the spring season.
Spring flowers are hard to pull your eyes away from this time of year, but The Butchart incorporates some stellar foliage plants that can’t help but steal some attention. The bright green Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata, Zones 5–8) in the center of this vignette is surely not being overshadowed by the bright blooms that surround.
Along with the gorgeous displays of more traditional plantings, there is also some living art scattered amongst the Spring Prelude. Yesterday we saw a stunning living wall of tropical plants, but this is a fascinating twist with cut branches and clumps of moss.
Even the art that isn’t living is spectacular. Amongst all the bold blooms and fascinating foliage this ornamental pot is still an eye-catching focal point.
Layers upon layers of beauty!
Another great shot of the marvelous layers of foliage that backdrop the spring blooms in the foreground of these beds. When it comes to foliage, what is your favorite? Do you swoon at large, luxurious leaves or are you a sucker for fine-textured specimens?
Lots of water elements can also be found throughout the displays, from the larger garden pond we saw yesterday to smaller fountains incorporated into various beds.
Lastly, more tropical wonders are utilized to create a garden arch unlike any I have ever seen. Rather than the traditional vines that we would traditionally see climbing a structure like this, moss and various epiphytes create this vertical planting.
Thank you so much, again, for sharing these gorgeous photos from a spectacular indoor garden experience, Cherry! We may be done with our time at The Butchart Gardens (for now), but Cherry has one last group of garden photos from another great public garden on Vancouver Island that we will be enjoying tomorrow.
And don’t forget that it’s time to start seeing more spring on Garden Photo of the Day! Big or small, we would love to see the color that has emerged from your garden so far this year. Follow the directions below to submit your photos to Garden Photo of the Day!
We want to see YOUR garden!
Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!
To submit, fill out the Garden Photo of the Day Submission Form.
You can also send 5–10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.
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