In early June, when I was house/dog sitting for my kiddos in Port Angeles, I took the Coho ferry across the Strait to Victoria and then the shuttle bus to the world famous Butchart Gardens. (Took advantage of a package offered by the Blackball Ferry; was about $100 for the ferry both ways, shuttle both ways and garden admission.) Been there? You must plan to go……. especially if you’re a fan of gardens and flowers.
Butchart Gardens covers more than 55 acres of the large estate of Jennie and Robert Butchart. It was Jennie’s genius to convert a worked-out limestone quarry into the Sunken Garden we go to see today. By the 1920s, more than 50,000 people visited each year. Today the gardens boast over 265,000 annuals of 900 varieties, 280 different roses, 40 different geraniums, 100 varieties of dahlias and 191 different tulips! As I wandered the paths, there was not a weed in sight, nor a dead leaf. The garden is super well tended.
The information center offers the garden guide in 25 different languages! That was impressive, I thought. And a Q&A booth which told me that the Blue Poppy would likely not be happy in Spokane.
My favorite flower, and what Butchart is famous for, is the Himalayan Blue Poppy. The gift shop sells seeds for the adventurous.
Claire Vail Claire Vail has twenty years of experience as a digital marketing and content strategist for high-profile institutions in higher education, publishing, and media. Before joining American Ancestors, she was Director of Web Communications at Tufts University, where she oversaw the implementation of large-scale website redesign and content management implementation projects for several Schools, including the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Claire has a master’s degree in journalism from Northeastern University and a second master’s in English literature from the University of Delaware, with a concentration in eighteenth century British and American studies. Her ancestry is Northern Italian (though Ancestry insists she’s actually French and German), British and Irish. Her interest in family history stems from finding her great grandmother’s name on a ship manifest from Palermo, a single line that listed her as “housewife” and “illiterate.” Claire is hoping to continue researching her ancestry back as far as possible, and to visit Udine, the town in the Friuli region of Northern Italy, to meet her cousins and learn more from them about the family. 
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Claire Vail has twenty years of experience as a digital marketing and content strategist for high-profile institutions in higher education, publishing, and media. 