PLANTS AND PLANT HUNTERS

When in Vancouver between Christmas and New Year we visited Queen Elizabeth park. These sculptures are strategically placed at the viewpoint over the city.

Here are Nessie and I investigating this camera-happy sculpture! I thought he was terrific!

This is what the camera-happy sculpture was looking at. That is the city in the background - quite lovely!

I was very impressed with the VanDusen Gardens which were next door to where we were staying for three weeks with Alastair. Here is a sculpture of David Douglas, the Scottish born botanist who travelled in British Columbia in the early 19th century, and named a lot of species of plants, including Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii).

His is known in Scotland and is included as one of the Plant Hunters in a most interesting garden in Perthshire called the Explorers' Garden. His story is here on their website.

Finally I was most taken with this plant, the purple Beautyberry Bush or Callicarpa dichotoma. It provided a most eye-catching colour in this mid-winter period. As the climate of Vancouver is very like Glasgow I am going to see if I can grow this shrub in our garden. I noticed that the gardens in Vancouver had the same sort of plants that grow in our gardens and were at the same stage in December.