Our vacation is over, but there are still pieces I need to talk about. One is Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We went knowing it would be pretty. Nothing prepared us for what we found. It is nothing less than spectacular, even on the thundery night we visited.
Robert Butchart was a Canadian businessman who manufactured Portland cement using limestone from a quarry he owned.
As Mr. Butchart exhausted the limestone in the quarry near their house, his enterprising wife, Jennie, conceived an unprecedented plan for refurbishing the bleak pit. From farmland nearby she requisitioned tons of top soil, had it brought to Tod Inlet by horse and cart, and used it to line the floor of the abandoned quarry. Little by little, under Jennie Butchart’s supervision, the abandoned quarry blossomed into the spectacular Sunken Garden.
Today Butchart Gardens is still in the family and tended to by fifty gardeners who keep it in bloom year round.
