A Walk With the Camellias

On Sunday it stopped raining after lunch so we decided to forgo the swimming pool for a walk in Hatley Park. I have loved this garden since being introduced to it when I was taking the Horticulture Technician course at Malaspina College (now called Vancouver Island University) in 1995. The garden is now about 100 years old and has never been left to overgrow, so it is an absolute gem.

The parking lot is below the old mansion, and to enter the garden you first have to climb the hill beneath this beautiful stone giant, making it and its sweeping lawns the first thing you see. Parking is $1.00/hr and with small kids, you'll want about two hours to see the garden. Admission is $4.50/adult, kids under 12 are free.

The entrance puts you at the Italian Garden, which was designed in 1912 by the Boston landscape firm Brett and Hall. This is a classic example of a formal Italian garden, complete with symmetrical gardens and tightly clipped box hedges. This garden is also a popular site for summer weddings.

The kids tore through this garden and made their way through the woodland garden to the Japanese Garden.

The garden was designed in 1909, and includes many mature rhododendrons, Japanese maples, ornamental cherries, camellias, and many other wonderful treasures, all centred around a large pond that features two gazebos. This would be a perfect place for a picnic on a warm day. Lucas, Cleo and Abby all had a lot of fun exploring the trails, searching for the water wheel, and hiding in the branches of the low trees and shrubs. There are also little tucked-away lanterns, arbours and trellises, and tiny bridges that make the Japanese garden a perfect place for families with small children.

The most notable of all the flowering plants we saw were the camellias. Hatley Gardens has dozens of cultivars throughout the gardens, as well as a wide path bordering the Japanese gardens that is lined on one side with various types of camellias. Camellia japonica is an evergreen shrub (generally maturing at about 10' high by 8' wide) with a thick and glossy green leaf. Most camellias flower in early spring--though Camellia sasanqua flowers in late fall--with rose-like flowers, usually double, in reds, pinks, and whites . These beautiful shrubs like conditions similar to rhododendrons, in moist shade and rich, organic soil. They also benefit from some overhead coverage (under an eaves, for example), which will protect their delicate and easily bruised flowers from heavy spring rains.

The last section of the garden that we visited was the bog garden, which includes a fish ladder that the kids raced flower petals down, and a large, beautiful pond featuring a Curly Willow (Salix babylonica) at its edge. Lucas found a dried cattail at the water's edge, which, as some of you may remember from your own childhood, makes an excellent sword/torch/fluff spreader/duster/sister tormentor. Soon we were all dusted with tiny fluffy seeds from the cattail, Cleo was upset because she didn't find her own cattail, and Abby had to pee, or rather, had already peed and needed new pants. So, we knew our time was up, and we headed back to the car for new pants and a little bit of the apple cake that I had brought along for a treat.