| This is for those who wonder what it's like for someone like me moving from eastern Canada to witness the west coast. This is a friend's garden on Salt Spring Island. He's talking about exotics in the Gulf Islands just to the northeast of Victoria, BC. He's so lucky never to have lived in a climate without palms. His garden smells like eucalyptus. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Exotic gardening on Salt Spring
| I enjoyed visiting exotic gardens on the west coast. I've seen incredible gardens that are all no further south than Ottawa. There is a large selection of plants and my favorite are broadleaf evergreens. As an ex-Ontario resident it will take me years to explore gardening here. Some flora goes dormant in the fall while others stay or actually pick the time to flower. It's like every season has it's plants. While others just sit as if time stood still, the dry summer turns into a wet winter. I've seen weird stuff like mahonia flowering before, during and after a snowfall. Palms on a sunny day in January with snow on the mountains. Or palms in frost. Yuccas in a pineapple express and the same plants in a dried out summer garden. Golden bamboo in Vancouver. Black bamboo in Victoria. Fatsia waiting for fall to flower. And yes the kiwis. I could not even grow normal apples in the North Bay - Sudbury area. I had good rain in summer (Victoria is too dry) but it snowed before Nov and I'd get a big frost or snow in early May. This year snow fell on the last day in May around North Bay. Parksville, BC has palms and kiwis and the very odd thing is that Sudbury or North Bay are further south. It seems not to make any sense but it's about winds and ocean currents. There's a reason why the conifers get so large on the west coast. This is a photo of an exotic plant enthusiast showing a public planting of palms north of Victoria in Parksville, BC. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Parksville, BC
