May in the Garden 2022
For a self-guided tour, use Garden Explorer to locate plants featured in this month’s post. Select a tour in the drop-down menu. Note: see the end of the article for a gallery of photos. May brings a huge variety of plants into flower in the Botanical Garden. The Carolinian Forest Garden, which is usually celebrated more for […]
April in the Garden 2022
We are all hoping that this year’s weather will settle back into a more predictable routine where most of our early Asian magnolias will have reached their peak of perfection.
March in the Garden 2022
Following on from a year of weather-related surprises, I am continuing with the theme of cautious weather forecasting. I will refrain from predicting the normal March flowering regime, which would include (at a minimum) magnolias, primulas, rhododendrons and a wide variety of bulbs. Instead, I am falling back on another group of broadleaved evergreens. Better safe than sorry—and anyway, I seldom have occasion to highlight plants that don’t have showy flowers. The bamboos are a group of mostly attractive broad-leaved evergreens with comparatively narrow leaves.
February in the Garden 2022
In the winter, woody plants with bark are often those that elicit the greatest number of comments from visitors.
January in the Garden 2022
As I’ve said many times before in this blog space, it’s difficult to predict the weather at the Botanical Garden more than a week or two out, which leaves me with little confidence about the number of winter-flowering plants that might be blooming for a visitor’s New Year’s walk. At this writing in mid-December, Clematis cirrhosa (winter clematis), Grevillea victoriae (royal grevillea), Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ (hybrid mahonia) and Viburnum x bodnantense (Bodnant viburnum) are looking great and full of flowers. As long as it doesn’t freeze hard, all of these will still be in bloom and there will be plenty of other flowers to talk about for January. No promises, of course. I can, however, talk about a feature that isn’t in the least affected by our normal weather: bark.
September 2021 in the Garden
In the Garden, September is the winding down of summer, not the end. There are still plenty of flowers to see, and the fruits and berries are just getting started.
August 2021 in the Garden
The “heat dome” in late June has made plants mature rapidly. There is plenty to see, including flowers, in UBC Botanical Garden in August.
How We Conserve Water at UBC Botanical Garden
Douglas Justice discusses the importance of water use for healthy collections and biodiversity and introduces our new irrigation system.
July 2021 in the Garden
July in UBC Botanical Garden is all about colour.
Self-Propagating Plants and the Beauty of Regenerative Practices
Discover a new way of seeing and experiencing gardens by seeing plants as intentional participants in their environment.