I hesitate to mention Arthur Erickson’s house and garden on a quiet street in West Point Grey (in Westside) only because it can be devilishly hard to get into. However, there are some organized tours, May through autumn (604-738-4195), so give it a try. Erickson is something of an institution on the West Coast (see “Arthur Erickson”). Yet his private life has been tumultuous (to say the least) and, when he couldn’t handle what must have been a considerable income, he was forced to give up ownership of his longtime home to a foundation (though he still lives here, at last word). This home is, in reality, a garage-turned-studio cottage set in an exquisite native and Asian garden. It’s a truly beautiful haven, with thickets of long grasses
and bamboo, salal and huckleberry, rare Himalayan rhododendrons and a persimmon tree — entirely fenced in cedar. Hugely recom¬mended if you like this kind of thing and can get in.
No secret, but so refined as to be routinely overlooked, is the Nitobe Garden (1903 West Mall, UBC, 604-822-9666). Named for a Japanese educator who tried to bridge the gap between East and West, it is considered among the most authentic Japanese gardens outside that country. Although not large, it has a spacious feel. Gravel or ever-green-needle pathways lead you around a large, shapely pond stocked with colorful carp. A traditional bridge and iris garden bisect the waterway, and off to one side sits a traditional teahouse, used occasionally for formal tea ceremonies. But the glory here is in the trees and plants, chosen and placed to complement each other with the changing seasons and meticulously maintained. UBC also boasts a large Botanical Garden (6804 Southwest Marine Drive, 604-822-9666) with a garden pavilion and gift shop. Temperate, exotic, and rare plants that thrive in a coastal forest setting are its specialty, along with 400 species of rhododendron. The garden manages a total of 17 acres, including an Asian garden, sixteenth-century physic garden, and native (indigenous plant) garden, as well as the Nitobe.
In another realm entirely are the eight disparate community gardens owned by the city leftover tracts of land of various sizes and configurations, used by the public with conditions. These include unrestricted public access; the right to grow only flowers and food for personal use; and a community education component.
Among the oldest and most successful is the Arbutus Rail Garden along the old CPR and BC Hydro right-of-way. It’s closely associated with the adjacent Society for Promoting Environmental Conservation (2150 Maple Street, Kitsilano, 604-736-7732).
Between Chinatown and the False Creek Flats you’ll find the more spacious Strathcona Community Garden (off Prior Street, near Hawks Avenue, East Vancouver). Here are small garden plots, a pond, a solar demonstration hut, and several orchards, including one de¬voted to espalier gardening. There are also lots of native plants, shrubs, and trees such as red elderberry, black cottonwood, indigenous yew, Red Oisier dogwood, and Nootka rose — more than ioo native species in all.
This garden’s offshoot is the nearby Cottonwood Community Gardens (access at the foot of Raymur Avenue, East Vancouver). Strathcona Community Garden was created after a plan to bulldoze the surrounding area for freeways was defeated in the 1960s. And when Strathcona was taken on by veterans of that battle, Cottonwood was carved from the remaining, even less nurturing, abandoned sand bed.
Looking around Cottonwood recently, I ran into one of its founding squatters, Oliver Kellhammer, who was visiting the garden from his Cortes Island home. We walked through a section run by the Environ-mental Youth Alliance, and an Asian garden with persimmon, bamboo, mulberry, and Chinese chestnut.
Longtime gardener Len Kydd, who was tending his plants, sees Cottonwood as pretty much a matter of making peace with the weeds. There’s also the politics, Kydd added. “We don’t argue about what goes on in the garden, we argue about the politics that impinge on the garden — like the sex trade and needle trade in the wider community. That happens here, too.”
Kydd claims that Cottonwood is politically more anarchic than Strathcona Garden. Added Kellhammer proudly of Cottonwood’s evolution, “It happened completely outside the bureaucratic format, without any city involvement — except benign neglect.”
A remarkable wooded garden landscape is found near the Beach Avenue entrance to Stanley Park and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation office — itself a fine 1962 example of West Coast Style (2099 Beach Avenue, Stanley Park, 604-257-8400).
Espaliered across a granite face of the building is an Atlantic cedar tree (cedrus atlantica glauca, according to parks board spokeswoman Tern Clark), meticulously tended to maintain its dramatic shape.
The surrounding woodlands, encompassing the tennis courts and pitch-and-putt course, nurture an exceptional collection of hybrid azaleas and rhododendrons relocated here in the late 1960s from a Vancouver Island nursery. Says Clark of this entirely public expanse:
“These gardens and surrounding trees and shrubs are at their finest between the middle of April and the end of May. Trees — including beeches, magnolias, dogwoods, cherries, and plums — add a pink-and-white haze and soft scents to this secret refuge.”
Stanley Park has other noted gardens, not the least of which is the Rose Garden off Pipeline Road. A small memorial garden suit-ably secreted from the busiest byways — is the Air Force Garden of Remembrance behind the Stanley Park Dining Pavilion. This is a natural rock garden with a pond, stepping stones, and seating, all under an arbor of trees.
Another lesser-known gem of a garden follows the public walkway just south of Granville Island, Sutcliffe Park, and the False Creek Community Centre. Here, a couple of parks board gardeners have gone way out of the box to produce a dense and glorious display of colors, tones, and textures that last year round.
Given that the best gardens are places where people can discover out-of-the-way niches and overlooked treasures, two well-publicized destinations merit attention. The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden (578 Carrall Street, Chinatown, 604-689-7133) can be visited for its buildings alone — the hand-fired roof tiles, carved woodwork, lattice windows, and pebbled courtyard each deserve attention. But the plantings ofpine, bamboo, and winter-blooming plum are said to be both “friends of winter” and expressions of Chinese virtues (which you’ll learn about when you visit).
The VanDusen Botanical Garden (5251 Oak Street, Central Vancouver, 604-878-9274), also open year round, is 55 acres of flow-ering trees, perennials, and evergreen shrubs in a well-designed setting of tranquil water features and mountain views.
Queen Elizabeth Park (West 33rd Avenue, at Cambie Street, Central Vancouver), named for the late Queen Mother (who visited Vancouver in 1939 with the newly crowned George vi), is the highest point in the city of Vancouver, at 492 feet. Here, two stone quarries have been transformed into ornamental gardens, including one devoted to roses. At the top of the 130-acre park sits the Bloedel Floral Conservatory (604-257-8570), a steamy dome supporting 500 species of tropical plants and 50 kinds of exotic birds.
|
