My comment to foreign visitors (who may have a long standing love of botanical gardens, and who may have visited other gardens in London, Singapore or various other 3rd world countries such as Indonesia, etc, would be: If you really wish to see a wide variety of well kept and well identified plants that are capable of growing in Canada, skip UBC's so called botanical garden, and instead drop around to a local "Home Depot" or to any nearby garden shop. When I visited, there was shamefully no end of money takers available (e.g., at the entrance, coffee shop, gift shop, plant shop), but anyone able to answer questions about plants was conspicuous by their absence! Very honestly, I would have been totally embarrassed to have brought visiting guests ...from overseas, or even from elsewhere in Canada! And lastly the carefully positioned "Ting Lookout Gazebo" predominantly offers a great view of cars parked on an adjacent roadway. I would consider that to be a definite must see if only I or any visitor had been held captive in a dark closet for his or her whole lifetime.
I don't work for the garden, so I don't have to apologize for your experience today. But you do know that you can post questions about anything you saw right here in this forum, right? I'm not the world traveller you are, but I have been to gardens in several cities and countries and am aware of no forum like this where I can get answers from the garden staff and other experts from around the world. I have written to several gardens to ask for a plant ID, and have only got replies from one garden. Just to be picky, there are two money takers, one at the entrance, and one at the gift shop/plant shop, as these are the same place. There is a coffee shop? They sell ice cream (maybe now they have more?) - that's the same cashier. It's true that we didn't find garden staff in the Asian Garden, and we seldom run into gardeners there. Today, we did ask questions of the curator of the Alpine Garden, and we ran into three other senior staff in the garden. Now we know who some of the senior staff are, but previously, we've just asked the first person we found with garden ID, and whoever it was acted like they were there to answer our questions. For the rest of our questions, we have posted them here. There are also the self-guided audio stops, but you need a data internet connection to access them in the garden.
So David, did you actually continue past the entry area and vicinity (I don't know where this gazebo is, but it doesn't sound like it's very far into the garden)? Because you aren't making it seem like you did.
I assumed it's the other end of the walkway outside the garden entrance, where the magnolias and princess tree are not in bloom right now.
I not only did travel beyond the reception area, I explored to the furthest limits of the park on both sides of the Moon Gate and Tunnel. To begin with, the greenhouse in the Alpine Garden came across as a "work in progress", as it was only sparsely populated with plants. North of that, I found the traffic noise along 16th Avenue a serious distraction to an otherwise pleasant walk through the B.C. Native Garden. Of all the individual attractions, I found the plants in the Physic garden were well maintained and labelled. On the other hand, if I had stumbled into the south side of the Botanical garden by accident, I would have mistaken it for a forested area surrounding what formerly may have been a large private estate whose owner had loved rhododendrons. Moreover, I can only surmise that the absence of drinking fountains within the park(except for the inconspicuously placed tiny fountain directly across from the coffee shop tables) has left many visitors with parched throats wishing they had been forewarned. And lastly, the gazebo I referred to in my initial comment is the large lookout building on the West side overlooking a row of cars along what used to be the old Marine drive (now closed off at the UBC end). While I didn't expect a Butchart garden, I found UBC botanical garden paled miserably in comparison to the Van Dusen, the Nitobe, Queen Elizabeth park, and especially to the Minter Country Garden near Abbotsford. The fact that the guide map draws attention to an uninteresting fallen tree and an imported uninteresting rock, as if they were important points of interest ...speaks volumes.
Oh, my. One would imagine that a World Traveler would have encountered many situations with less than ideal conditions. One would further imagine that such a person would undertake journeys for the enjoyment of them. Anywhere, anytime, both negative and positive elements coexist. Too bad that the good, the beautiful, the positive were so eclipsed by the presence of cars and absence of water fountains. Uninteresting fallen tree? Indeed. What was its significance to merit mention in the guide map? I would and do venture to suppose that there are fungi, lichen, and other living things of interest which could be observed upon or near this tree. Uninteresting rock? Surely it found its way onto the map for a reason. What is it? No, I daresay that UBC is not like other gardens. Of course not. It is a shame that the apparent goal of this visit was not to observe what lives there, but to concentrate on what does not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are innumerable forms of beauty: if one has a single rigid standard by which all else is measured, happiness will be be hard to find. There is beauty all around us---if we will look with an unjaundiced eye.
I do not consider any of the other gardens listed as being of the same caliber as the UBC facility, which is an actual university collection housed at an educational institution. That the Minter effort is held up as a shining example of a good display garden says it all as far as what it is that David considers acceptable.
Of course, there are always people who will be disappointed in something. But comments like this can be helpful. The UBC garden is not a display garden and it's not trying to compete with VanDusen and certainly not with Minter. But if it's being marketed as a display garden, then people who are expecting that experience are of course going to be disappointed. The Greenheart Canopy Walkway too - if that is marketed as a thrill for the walk on a swinging skyway instead of a chance to experience the tree canopy up close, it sets up disappointment. These attractions need to be clear about why they are inviting the public, and then make it clear to the public what they can expect to experience. And if the public is being invited for a learning experience, it's not too unreasonable for people to expect to be able to ask questions about what they're seeing. Instead of people onsite, we have the forums. To me, it's a better deal, since in my experience, most (but not all) of the helpful people at gardens can't answer my questions, and though they say they will get me answers, they do not. And here, when there are people around, they are very knowledgeable.
Unfortunately, Minter Gardens closed in 2013. The Minter Country Gardens retail store in Chilliwack is outstanding.
Perhaps it should be recognized that I entered the garden as a "visiting tourist" and now find myself transformed into an advocate for visitors who are quite simply willing to pay to see an inordinate quantity of diverse well pruned and well cared for plants in a well laid out garden setting. And herein lies the problem. The average visitor to a "botanical garden" cares little about the technical definition of a "botanical garden" as carefully detailed by the Botanical Gardens Conservation International. No, instead their expectations deal more with how wonderful the garden layout is, and perhaps how many new and interesting looking species of plants they will get to see that they have never seen before, ...and oh yes ...the more in bloom the better. You know ...simple folk who want to spend an afternoon strolling through a beautifully manicured park. On the other hand, I fully understand and appreciate that plant aficionados, especially like those who obviously use this forum, are less interested in the "display" aspects of the garden and more interested in the technical aspects of the collection. Unfortunately the fact that the garden is tightly squeezed between a large playing field and well used motorways may be unimportant for techies, but it is nevertheless far less desirable for the simple folk who don't normally associate traffic noise with "botanical gardens", and who can readily discern the difference between carbon monoxide and aromatic flower perfume. By the responses to my posts to-date, it is adequately clear that there are plenty of green thumbers sporting microscopes and plant lineage tables whose oxen I have unfortunately gored already. I assure you that I get no pleasure from riling others. Therefore I apologize to those to whom I have brought displeasure. However, because the garden cannot be relocated to a more suitable location, I would recommend improving visitor satisfaction by installing a water fountain or two, and including the canopy walkway as part of the garden's general admission, instead of presenting it as yet another commercial franchise within the park. Oops, I think I just gored more oxen. Methinks I hath protesteth too much already, so some of you will no doubt be pleased to know that this will be my last post. Cheers.
Hello David, Thank you for sharing your feedback on your recent visit to our garden. We are sorry that you did not enjoy your time here at the Garden and that you were not able to locate someone to answer your questions. Starting on June 19th we will be offering guided tours during the summer for visitors who would like to join us to discover more about our garden. These tours are included with admission for all visitors. As you may know, UBC Botanical Garden is a University department involved in research, conservation, education and public outreach. All plants within the Garden have an accession tag hanging from them with the plant’s name, when it was accessioned and its origin. We have been raising funds to support a major signage and wayfinding project to improve navigating our collections and better communicate the interesting plants within our garden. We will be starting to implement this exciting new project soon. The main road for traffic on this part of campus used to be Old Marine Drive, the road that the Ting overlooks. Due to safety and erosion concerns the current road was built directly through UBC Botanical Garden. This created some challenges with regard to noise in certain parts of the garden and we are always working on strategies to improve this. An educational plaza that is being built in our Food Garden will use a sound wall help to abate the noise from the road in that area of the garden. On the other side of the Garden, we have also installed a number of plantings along Old Marine drive that over time will improve the view and minimize the visibility of the cars from the Ting. Your suggestion that there needs to be more water fountains in the Garden is something already under discussion. The obvious solution of installing more is difficult to implement as it would require significant upgrades to our infrastructure that are currently beyond our financial reach. It is also important to note that the Greenheart Canopy Walkway is owned and operated by Greenheart Conservation, a third party contracted to the University. Our garden has recently received an award of excellence from Trip Advisor as well as a National Award of Excellence from the Canadian Garden Tourism Council but clearly we did not live up to expectations on your visit. If you’d like to come back and join us for one of our tours please get in touch with us at garden.info@ubc.ca and we’d be happy to make the arrangements for you. Again, thank you for your feedback and if you have any additional suggestions or questions please do not hesitate to contact us at the email address mentioned above. Thank you, UBC Botanical Garden
Hi Wendy, We try to be careful to market the garden as a botanical collection and not a display garden such as Minter Garden and we also try to market the walkway as an educational experience from a different perspective and not a thrill-ride in the promotional material we produce in partnership with our partners at Greenheart. We will continue to be mindful of this so we appreciate your feedback on this. We are also building up our signage, tours and other programming so we can better share our collections with the public. Thanks!
UBCBG has plenty of spectacular flowering plants and plant displays. You can lead a horse to water...
