March in the Garden 2026

Magnolia sprengeri ‘Eric Savill’

March is a tricky month for predicting flowers. The weather prognosticators have gotten a little better over the years, but predicting more than two weeks in advance can be a dangerous business. We can all remember years when a long period of mild weather over the winter is suddenly interrupted by an unexpected plunge into the deep freeze, just as flowers are opening. Certainly, the winter of 2023/24 and the havoc it precipitated comes to mind! I recall one year a couple of decades ago when the Magnolia Society had their meeting in Seattle in mid-March and the whole region was affected the same week by a serious Arctic blast. Folks from around the world toured the Botanical Garden the next day and all I can remember is blackened buds. The Ides of March (March 15th) brought Julius Caesar bad luck—indeed, the very worst kind—but thankfully, killing frosts are rare in mid-March at UBC. And judging by the numbers of flower buds visible on our trees, 2026 will go down as one of the better years for early magnolia flowers.

Among the earliest to flower in the Botanical Garden, usually in mid to late March, are species and selections in Magnolia subgenus Yulania (Chinese botanists writing for Flora of China consider this group to be a separate genus, also called Yulania, and this can cause some confusion when researching these plants). The Yulania group includes most of what we know as the “precocious” magnolias—those that flower on naked branches, before the leaves emerge. This year we expect the yulanias in the David C. Lam Asian Garden to show their colours a few weeks earlier than usual.

The first of these to bloom in the Garden is Magnolia zenii (Zen magnolia), a lovely plant, but also one of considerable conservation value, which is why we feature it on one of our interpretive signs. The sign (on Lower Asian Way west of Kingdon Ward Way) highlights the fact that the species has been reduced to a single wild population on the northern slopes of Baohua Mountain in Jiangsu Province, China. Zen magnolia was first brought into cultivation in 1980 at the Jiangsu Institute of Botany and Botanical Garden Memorial Sun Yat-sen, in Nanjing, China. Nine seeds from the Baohua Mountain population were presented to staff from two American botanical gardens. While only five seedlings were successfully germinated, by 1986 the cuttings from these trees were distributed to botanical gardens around the world, including three to UBC Botanical Garden. The flowers are small, by magnolia standards, but borne in incredible profusion. It is a sight not to be missed. The Zen magnolia on Campbell Trail near Stearn Trail leads the way, as it is always a few weeks earlier than either of the other specimens.

While flower openings by the various Magnolia sargentiana selections can vary by more than six weeks across the Garden, there’s a fair chance that at least one of our specimens will be in flower before the end of March. We know this because FOGs have been recording this in the Garden annually since 1991 with their Magnolia Phenology Study (look for the hanging yellow tags that identify study subjects). One especially early selection of Sargent’s magnolia is a darker-than-typical cultivar called ‘Blood Moon’ (Campbell Trail and Straley Loop). Another early-blooming selection of Magnolia sargentiana has pale, nearly white flowers. Visitors can find it at the corner of Lower Asian Way and Kingdon Ward Way.

Magnolia sprengeri var. diva (Professor Sprenger’s magnolia) is native to the mountains of central China and is considered the cold-hardiest of the large-flowered wild Asian magnolias. There is also a white flowered version of the species—M. sprengeri var. elongata, but it is not common in gardens. People generally recognize Magnolia sprengeri by its comparatively long and narrow tepals, which are, in var. diva, usually pink or rose pink on the outside and creamy white toward the inside. Note that the term tepal is used for flowers where there is no differentiation between petals and sepals. Prior to flowering, Magnolia sprengeri can also be recognized by the almost horizontal posture of its large, fuzzy, yellowish grey flower buds. When trees are in flower, there is often an appealing fragrance of wintergreen or chewing gum in the vicinity. Our largest and most spectacular specimen is at the corner of Upper Asian Way and Campbell Trail.

There are a number of selections of the popular M. sprengeri var. diva in gardens. ‘Eric Savill’ is a garden seedling selection of var. diva, but with extraordinarily hot pink-backed, rumpled tepals. Once open, the strong pink bleeds through to the inside, making the flowers, which are some 25 cm (10″) across, look like melting raspberry-ripple ice-cream. There are two specimens in the Garden. One is near the west end of the boardwalk by the Ting, and the other—a much slenderer, taller tree—at the west end of the parking lot. Behold the Ides of March when the magnolias are blooming!