A Nice Afternoon in VanDusen Botanical Garden

On June 26, I spent a nice afternoon with my friend at VanDusen Botanical Garden. This beautiful garden is located on Oak Street and 37th Avenue in Vancouver. It’s not free though, good that I had a coupon of second complimentary admission … instead of paying $10.25 each, we paid $10.25 for two :)

VanDusen Botanical Garden was opened to the public in August of 1975. It is a 55-acre (22 hectare) garden with 7500 kinds of plants from around the world! Some plants have been saved from extinction since the garden provides a safe place for them to grow. Unlike parks and display gardens, botanical gardens are living museums and their plant collections are scientifically organized, documented and labelled.



Since it was my first time visiting VanDusen, there were some interesting places that I have missed such as Medicine Wheel, Elizabethan Maze, Mediterranean Garden and Cypress Pond. I began my route with Phyllis Bentall Garden (the top photo with pink water lilies in the pond was from this garden) -> Ornamental Grasses -> Livingstone Lake -> Southern Hemisphere -> Heather Garden -> Heron Lake (or maybe Heather Pond?) -> Sino-Himalayan -> Waterfall -> Meditation Garden -> Korean Pavilion -> Canadian Heritage Garden -> Camellia Collection -> Witchhazels ->Hydrangeas -> Lathhouse -> Laburnum Walk -> Rose Garden.

Mock Orange - Hydrangea family, native to North America
Ornamental Onion - onion family, native from Turkey to Hungary and Yugoslavia

Fish (koi?) and great blue heron in Livingstone Lake

Southern Hemisphere Garden - where the plants grown in southern hemisphere can be found such as Monkey Puzzle Tree from Argentina, Brazil and Chile or Eucalyptus from Australia.
I believe this water lily is called "Nymphaea" or in Chinese 耐寒的睡蓮

I could view the beautiful blue sky and the mountain from North Vancouver in the open area of Vandusen Garden!

Himalayan blue poppies in Sino-Himalayan Garden

Meditation Garden

Korean Pavilion - this hexagonal pavilion was a gift from the people of Korea at the end of 1986 World Expo in Vancouver. It is surrounded by Korean native plants such as its national flower, Hibiscus Syriacus (Rose of Sharon).

Canadian Heritage Garden
Chinese Witch Hazel (Hubei and Jiangxi Provinces)

Hydrangeas - native to Japan, Korea, Russia and Taiwan. Probably native to North America too since I see lots of them here in the summer. It is called 繡球花 in Chinese and Ajisai (紫陽花) in Japanese. I've seen them in different colours - white, pink, purple and purple blue. The one I like most is purple blue (紫藍色繡球花).


Pruning of Hydrangeas – in early spring cut out the three oldest stems at ground level to encourage the growth of new basal shoots. Cut back the old flower heads to leave only a strong pair of buds.

Laburnum Walk - I really love walking on the path, I was fascinated by its beauty - a curving pathway with Laburnum watereri ‘Vossi’ (watereri trees) and Ornamental Onion (purple onion flowers) planted on each side. What a perfect match!

Rose Garden where uncommon roses were found

I thought the below flowers were Moss Roses since there was a sign nearby, but they were not according to my research on the web. They look nice though ... anybody knows what roses they are???

China Roses

The most common and typical roses - Hybrid Tea Roses



In the evening, we had dinner in its Shaughnessy Restaurant. We sat by the window with beautiful garden view. The ambience was quite nice - full of 田園氣色 (I felt like situated in a lovely garden and farm).