Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver is considered a masterpiece of reclamation and transformation and of public management of a most noteworthy garden open for free to the public whole year round. This former basalt quarry is now the second most visited park in Vancouver (a close second to the world-famous Stanley Park). Queen Elizabeth Park has indeed become a good example of how the public and the government can pool together finances, human resources, and talents to provide everyone not only a very beautiful garden but also facilities for sports and recreation.
Queen Elizabeth Park has also become a favorite walking destination with my family and a photoshoot location with our cats on weekends.
Queen Elizabeth Park, to us, may not be as well-known as the Butchart Garden. Butchart Garden, on Vancouver Island, is British Columbia’s, maybe even Canada's premier garden.
Queen Elizabeth Park may not be as stunning as nearby VanDusen Garden during the rhododendron and azalea and cherry blossom blooming season in spring, or the high blooming season in summer, but Queen E Park is FREE -- that’s the biggest plus for Queen Elizabeth Park.
We can take Queen E Park (and Butchart Garden) as somewhat of an ugly duckling story. Queen E Park, like Butchart Garden, is a garden transformed from an old limestone quarry.
Both must be awfully dusty, boringly grey, and industrial-ugly way back when they were operational quarries.
Yet, now, both gardens have the great advantage of having great vantage points already carved out for them.
From the top of the hill, we see a dramatic vista of Queen E Park’s tapestry of bursting colors created by masses of bedding plants in its Small Quarry and its Large Quarry gardens. Perennial plants, specimen trees, winding paths, and water features help create artfully contrived landscapes.
Some little history, on the side. Queen E Park was officially named in 1940 after King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited in 1939. The Larger Quarry Garden, however, didn’t begin to develop until 1948 after the end of WWII. The Small Quarry Garden was developed in 1962 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the incorporation of Vancouver City.
Vancouver skyline and the cloud-covered Coast Mountains viewed from the top of the hill in Queen Elizabeth Park, just before the sun starts to set
After taking a good view of the Vancouver skyline set against the backdrop of the Coast Mountains, and having decided we have taken enough pictures from the top of the hill, we make a beeline to the Small Quarry garden first.
We notice the Small Quarry garden is designed as a "dry" garden and has many Oriental horticultural influences including an arching bridge over a stony stream bed.
Wooden bridge over a dry bed, with a peek at the garden below
We step down to the dry bed to take photos of the wooden bridge from below. A mother and possibly her daughter are busy posing for each other on the bridge, so we wait until they are hidden by the bridge to take our shots; the masked duo might think of us as perverted photographers trying to steal photos of them. Nah.
View while descending into the Small Quarry garden
Then we slowly make our way -- snapping photos at the same time, of course -- to the Small Quarry’s main garden. As we further descend from the big hill, we notice a floral peace sign (or is it just a V for Vancouver?) to the right; the glassed patios of the restaurant up on the hill look like a modern “castle;” flowers galore (both of the cultivated kind and the forgotten-to-be-clipped wild ones) crawl up the sides of the hill; an artfully designed flower bed sprawls at the lowest level of the quarry.
As we notice the exposed face of a rocky “hill” to provide a backdrop to the bedding display bed, we go crazy with our phones' cameras.
Taking the back pathway, we head for the motherlode of Queen E Park: the Large Quarry Garden. Artfully laid out on all sides of this garden are beds and islands and borders of annuals and perennials combined to create extremely pleasing focal points. Focal points? More like an artful circus where many “tents” cry for our focus. We'll just call them points of great interest, not focal points.
The Large Quarry garden looks amazing whether viewed from the back, the front, or any side. It's a horticultural kaleidoscope.
In the middle of this well-laid-out quarry, are giant stands of gunnera -- those so-called elephant ears, except each leaf is just much larger than an elephant’s ears!
The giant elephant ears, with a colorful floral bed at their feet, by the pond (pond hidden by the giant leaves of the gunnera)
A diminutive concrete bridge joins sections of the pond, echoing perhaps the bigger arching wooden bridge perched along the side of the hill above it.
A little farther off the concrete bridge was a small grove of black bamboo. We’ve been longing for some black Chinese bamboo in our home garden. We want to take photos of the black bamboo -- you see, if we can’t have the real thing, at least the pictures might be enough. But a group of families and two lovebirds couldn’t get enough of their photos taken one after another. They’re taking their sweet time taking photos with their faces against the black culm, between two bamboo stems, even behind bamboo leaves, behind a clump of bamboo, leaning against a bamboo stand, and all over the tiny grove in various poses and lots of pauses. I even offer to take the pictures of the lovebirds to slyly speed up the process since the two are taking the longest time doing their pictorials; as one would pose, the partner runs out of the grove, yells out instructions and tips on how the partner ought to pose, then take a dozen shots. They act like official photo-shooter for each other. Must be doing their pre-nuptial pictorial?
We actually find it amusing to watch the lovebirds’ photo extravaganza.
But we don’t have all the time to wait. The sun is sinking, hiding behind the darkening clouds and soon behind the mountains to the north. So we choose to move on and take pictures of the various flower beds, borders, and islands in the Large Quarry area.
An island of flowers planted in a pattern in the Large Quarry garden acts as the foreground of the arching wooden bridge along the hillside of the Small Quarry garden above. A study in Geometry?
From the Large Quarry we can gaze up to the arched wooden bridge and peripheral plantings of the Small Quarry upper garden, with the Bloedel Conservatory in the background. Inversely, from the arched bridge and the lower grounds of the Bloedel Conservatory, we get great peek-a-boos of the various sections of the Large Quarry Garden down below.
Because of these multi-level and varied vantage points, we treasure Queen E as a unique photo destination for its photogenic and dramatic gardens.
Honestly, at Queen E Park we could have close to zilch photography skills yet harvest a bounty of beautiful, stunning pictures. Great for landscape photography, so Queen E is one extremely popular destination for weddings or graduation or any occasion (like those lovebirds, remember?) location shooting. We truly enjoy taking pictures at Queen E Park until our cell phone’s juice becomes alarmingly low.
On the topmost level of this hilly garden is the Bloedel Conservatory, the only attraction that has paid entrance at $7. This attractive domed paradise houses more than 120 free-flying exotic birds, 500 exotic plants, and flowers/plants in its temperature-controlled environment. It has sections that create tropical, sub-tropical, and desert environments for the specimen flora and fauna of the world.
It is operated jointly by Vancouver Park Board and the Vancouver Botanical Garden Association; the same partners running the nearby VanDusen Botanical Garden. The Bloedel Conservatory is a designated heritage building
Pieces of artwork dot the garden. Some are temporary exhibits while a few are permanent fixtures.
“The Photo Session”-- our favorite-- are fun bronze figurative sculptures of a man photographing three people, by J. Seward Johnson, Jr. The bronze statues occupy the viewing platform to the Small Quarry garden and the panoramic view of the skyline of Vancouver and of the scenic Coast Mountains. What a great location, since people who want to have a panoramic view or photo of the garden below, the Vancouver skyline out there, and the mountains yonder can never miss the realistic bronze statues that are having their own picture taken. We think “The Photo Session” is the most photographed art piece here.
I, in particular, am fascinated more by “Love in the Rain” by Vancouver artist Bruce Voyce.
I find this a clever adaptation of similarly-themed works of art wherein locks have been attached to bridges and fences by lovers/couples. But Vancouver being “Raincouver,” I find it a clever spin on the city’s seemingly too-frequent rain.
The park's most famous sculpture, however, is “Knife Edge-Two Piece” by renowned British sculptor Henry Moore.
It’s by the "Dancing Fountain" in the plaza beside the Bloedel Conservatory. This bronze sculpture is one of only three copies; the others are in London (UK) and at the Rockefeller Estate in New York (USA).
The "Dancing Fountain" is fenced off during this latest visit. But we’ve seen it a few times before this Covid pandemic.
Its 70 jets of water spouts are programmed to shoot at varying heights and times, creating that beautiful “dance.” At night, colored neon lights would have illuminated the shooting waters to even heighten the drama.
The Dancing Fountain and the Bloedel Conservatory at night
(Photo CTTO by: V. Earle, from his blog on Bloedel Conservatory)
The "Dancing Fountain" is said to be built atop one of Vancouver’s drinking water reservoirs. The water from the "Dancing Fountain" is not part of the water that Vancouverites drink -- in case one is wondering.
Although we run out of time to explore the Arboretum on our latest visit, we’ve been there a few times before. It is Canada’s first civic arboretum (started in 1949) by forest wardens. At present, close to 1500 trees from all over Canada are now part of the landscape of Queen E Park.
We also bypass the giant pond where birds, Canadian geese, and ducks are wont to fish or just cool off in the waters during hot summer days. And on rare occasions, unsupervised little boys and girls --who'd gone unnoticed when their picnicking parents are too busy having fun -- cavort in the shallow waters with so much noise as the feathered kind.
Queen E Park also has a wonderful Rose Garden. Started in 1967 to commemorate Canada’s Centennial, the Rose Garden is found in the lower southwestern part of Queen E Park. Now, its collection and its space are getting bigger as citizens and the staff donate newer or rarer varieties.
Our Silliman University alumni group has held our annual Founders Day picnic on the grounds just across from the Rose Garden and beside the recreational area. Other groups make use of the sprawling green spaces all throughout the Park.
The designated recreational areas allow people to play tennis, lawn bowling, pitch and putt mini golf, basketball, and of course the more agile and daring teenagers can roller skate or do their aerial acrobatics on curved boards on wheels. And snaking through the various sections of the Queen E Park are numerous pathways and asphalted walking, jogging, and biking trails. We also notice many small groups doing yoga or making those slow-motion karate chops and kicks. That's called tai-chi or some incarnations of this Chinese limbering and flexing exercises.
So Queen E Park is not all about gardens, select flora and fauna of the world. It offers a lot more to the human residents and visitors of Vancouver alike -- for FREE.
For a botanic treatment of gardens where plants and trees are grouped by their geographical origins or plant types, visit nearby VanDusen Garden on 5251 Oak Street. Here's my blog on VanDusen Garden: https://sansenleevendiola.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/the-vandusen-garden-vancouver-bc-canada/
The Garden, on top of Vancouver's highest point, with the North Shore and Coast mountains as its beautiful backdrop
Yes, on top of beautiful Vancouver’s highest point and the geographical center called Little Mountain, the Queen Elizabeth Park is definitely NOT some little success but a huge mountain of success as a public garden complex. We never tire of visiting Queen E Park. We bet you won’t either.
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