So let’s say you’re in the cement-making business, and you move west to buy a limestone quarry. Then say you exhaust the limestone quarry and you’re left with a giant hole in the ground. What now? Turn it into a sunken garden!

That’s what Jennie and Robert Butchart did in 1904. (The cement factory workers helped move in top soil and rocks.) In 1939 they gave the property to their grandson for his 21st birthday. Fortunately he had a head for business and added crowd-drawing holiday and special occasion events. The gardens stayed in the family, and since 2009 the Butcharts’s great-granddaughter, Robin-Lee Clarke, has owned Butchart Gardens.
The entrance plaza feels like the garden version of Disneyland Main Street.
This is where visitors walk to get from the parking lot to the entrance plaza.
Catching the tail end of rhododendron season!
They serve afternoon tea in the original family residence. (I found out later that there’s a vegan tea!)
Even the trash cans are a garden.
One of the biggest tasks in transitioning from cement production to garden was draining the quarry. It was nice of them to leave some for a pond!
Made it to the sunken garden! I must have missed the Butchart Garden umbrella-with-admission deal.
On the quarry floor.
The quarry from the hill in its center.
One last pond shot.
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