Browsing “Parks”

UBC Botanical Garden is Canada’s oldest continuously operating university botanical garden. The original mission of the garden was research into the native flora of British Columbia. Over the past nine decades, our mission has broadened to include research, conservation, teaching and public display of temperate plants from around the world, particularly Asian, alpine and native plants. We’re also home to the Greenheart Canopy Walkway.Come visit us – we’re located at 6804 SW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC. You can find more info at botanicalgarden.ubc.ca

April is an exceptional month for flowers at the Botanical Garden. Magnolias are in their ascendancy now, and daffodils and cherry blossoms are everywhere bringing cheer to Vancouver’s April showers. This is also definitely the month to see rhododendrons in the Garden. Every day brings another few species into bloom. Some of the most beautiful of these rhododendrons are in the David C. Lam Asian Garden, many from wild collections made in exotic locations in Asia.

Indeed, there are hundreds of different species here, and every one has a story to tell. One of the ways we tell those stories is through our smart phone tours. If you haven’t been in the garden lately, you might not have noticed small signs in a variety of colours that indicate the various self-guided tours we’ve compiled for visitors. One of these, the Rhododendron Study Tour, which will be completed before the end of this month, was made possible by a donation from the Vancouver Rhododendron Society.

Each of the tour stops is clearly numbered and has a graphical QR (quick response) code on the sign. Using a smart phone QR code reader (a number of different ones are available free on the Internet), one merely has to point the smart phone at the QR code, and the smart phone does the rest. For each stop on the tour is a short descriptive write up and a corresponding sound file. Tapping the play button allows you to hear the description read aloud.

Along with the Rhododendron Tour, visitors can listen to (or read) a Garden Introduction Tour (yellow signs), Prehistoric Plants Tour (beige signs), Vine Study Tour (light green signs), Plant Explorers in Asia Tour (black signs) and our newest, the Magnolia Tour (dark blue signs). Ask at the Gatehouse for maps of each of the tours.

Location: Buntzen Lake The bright red, stinging sunburn on my neck (I am about as white as they come and really shouldn’t even leave the house when the sun’s out) is making it really hard for me to believe that the weather was ever wet enough to get the water levels up this high at Buntzen, much less as recently as this week. This is a favourite walking place of mine, thanks for the reminder to get back out there, Stijn. Might be a good spot for a first hike with the baby. I love the solemn, meditative quality of this image, as if the objects have been stranded there for days but it’s happened before and they know that it won’t last forever. I imagine a conversation between them, like a bunch of oldies at a bus stop, checking their watches and complaining that the buses don’t run often enough and Oh, hasn’t the weather been miserable. Speaking of favourite walking places, if you’re in the Commercial Drive area in the next few days, go and visit Cotton Drive, between Kitchener and Charles Streets. The whole block is in cherrybloom and it just smells fantastic.

It’s that point in your consciousness where you can feel at one with nature, escaping the trappings of the day-to-day to an almost dream-like place where nothing else seems to exist besides you and your natural surroundings. It is our opinion here at VIA that Vancouver holds a unique place in the civilized world in that reaching this state often requires no more effort than simply pulling off to the side of the road, pocketing your keys and taking a few steps into the forest

Location: Hollyburn @ Cypress Mountain, West Vancouver Surreal, cinematic, downright creepy and definitely absolutely brilliant, this painstakingly (I’m sure) composed image of a cross-country skier emerging from the night jamp right off of my screen today and smacked me in the face. What a totally unusual way of seeing one of our beautiful local mountains, for us as well as for the photographer. Really excellent in so many ways. Thanks, Billy!

It’s that point in your consciousness where you can feel at one with nature, escaping the trappings of the day-to-day to an almost dream-like place where nothing else seems to exist besides you and your natural surroundings. It is our opinion here at VIA that Vancouver holds a unique place in the civilized world in that reaching this state often requires no more effort than simply pulling off to the side of the road, pocketing your keys and taking a few steps into the forest

It would appear as though a copycat sign killer is on the loose in Vancouver! We brought you the story of DUDE CHILLING PARK in which local artist Viktor Briestensky created a Vancouver Park Board sign from scratch and installed it “for the homies” (his words, when I talked to him last week), and today we were sent this photo below by Brenton Walters. Hm.

Photo: Brenton Walters

At first glance I thought that what someone had done was added “and Poo” to this Park Board sign located in Templeton Park at Templeton and Adanac. I thought maybe there was a public washroom in the park that people had a tendency to drive up to, park, then… well… use… but commissioner Sarah Blyth confirmed that someone has simply stolen the letter “L” from the end of “Pool”. Not quite as clever nor interesting as Dude Chilling Park, but nonetheless worth a chuckle.

Our friends at PWL Partnership Landscape Architects in Vancouver recently finished a project in New Westminster that you might have already heard about. It’s called Pier Park and is 3.8 hectares of awesomeness on the Fraser. You can learn all about it HERE. I sent my three year old son out to review it and he came back wielding two thumbs up.

He loved the playground, of course

A couple of cool features include the sand-dumping-thingy as well as chairs which have hinges and allow you to face one way or the other, depending on where you like your sun
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