The Montreal Botanical Garden is the most beautiful garden in the beautiful historic city of Montreal in western Canada. Its 75 hectares (185 acres) of indoor and outdoor gardens and greenhouses, considered one of Canada’s most visited gardens, is worth all your walking, sunburn, and sweat, and a $20 entrance fee.
The Montreal Botanical Garden is one place you do not want to miss once you're in Montreal — your love for gardening and outstanding gardens will make your visit more memorable and meaningful.
At the Garden, you'll be welcomed by a long stretch of gurgling water pool fed by several mini waterfalls along the length.
As you come out from the Ticketing kiosk you can turn left and go into the glassed greenhouses, or you can turn right and proceed to the main garden.
Walk around the Perennial Garden. Enjoy the sights and smells of your favorite perennial plants, like blue delphiniums flowering above a patch of bright yellow daisies and light blue flowering mint and salvias. Catmint and nepeta bellow along the walkways.
You can move on to the Food Garden where squash, cucumber and peas clamber up poles and trellised structures. A few rows of corn start to show promise of cobs to come. Neat rows of leafy vegetables occupy what little space is left along white pebbled pathway.
Next, you'll see the so-called Garden of Innovations, the Quebec Corner, and the Monastery Garden. Interestingly, side by side are the Toxic Plants and the Medicinal Plants sections.
Amble through the Flowery Brook section, the Lilacs section, and the Alpine Garden. In this area you'll see small brooks winding through the themed gardens and outcrops of rocks are connected together by small bridges over slow moving creeks and little canals.
Totem poles and teepee structures beckon you to come to the First Nations Garden. Here you'll see the plants that have provided indigenous people with their daily food, medicine, and materials for household items. The First Nations Garden is a recent addition to the Montreal Botanical Garden to honor and present the cultures of the indigenous population of Canada.
The most popular sections, undoubtedly, of the Montreal Botanical Garden are the Chinese Garden and the adjacent Japanese Garden.
The Chinese Garden showcases authentic-looking pagodas, an inner garden surrounded by a fence that resembles an undulating back of a dragon, and an artificial mountain.
The Chinese Garden at the Montreal Botanic Garden is definitely a crowd favorite
The Chinese Garden mimics traditional lines of Ming Dynasty gardens. Covering 2.5 hectares, it displays a collection of bonsai and penjing donated by families; penjing is the ancient Chinese art of depicting artistically formed trees, other plants, and landscapes in miniature, much like bonsai.
It also has other Oriental structures, like a multi-tiered temple on top of the artificial mountain facing the pagoda across from the pond, serene emerald-colored ponds and gurgling waterfalls and streams.
The Japanese Garden has its own Oriental structures and connecting bridges to enthrall the visitors
The adjacent 2.5-hectare Japanese Garden contains a building in the Japanese style where Japanese tea ceremony is performed. It also offers classes on tea ceremony rituals to the public. Occasionally, the Japanese arts of laido (swordsmanship) and Ikebana are also demonstrated here.
Close to the exit are the Aquatic Garden and the Rose Garden. Several water lilies (miniature and the giant kinds) float on the Aquatic Garden and provide the resident koi fish places to play hide and seek with visitors.
The Rose Garden showcases rows of sweet-smelling roses of varied types and colors. There are many varieties of the modern garden roses, old garden roses, and wild roses. Miniature roses and climbing roses also abound.
Anywhere in the sprawling Montreal Botanical Garden you can meander through paths of the various themed gardens and enjoy the beauty of the gardens up close. The metal ID placards of each plant allows you to get to know thousands of plant species and varieties from all over the world.
Or walk around the koi ponds in the Chinese and the Japanese Gardens, and take in the beauty and appreciate the cultural influences of East Asia in this national Garden and perhaps in your own gardens.
A water fountain leads to the 20 themed gardens
Or simply sit on the grassy lawns connecting the themed gardens. Or settle on one of the many benches scattered in the Garden to relax and enjoy the tranquility of this jewel of a place. A few art installations are there waiting for you to admire.Do whatever you please in this restful and peaceful place.
Within the garden compound are Exhibition Greenhouses. The displays are grouped according to the biomes or horticultural zones of the plants.
There is also an interactive Biodiversity Centre that aimed to educate the public on responsible and sustainable horticulture, about gardening, protecting the environment, and investigating the effects of mankind’s actions, like city building, developing tracts of land for commercial buildings and even what might seem necessary in a modern society (like building roads and homes). Focus of the displays included conserving endangered plant species.
The Montreal Botanical Garden is in the Olympic Park, in the outskirts of Montreal. To get to the Garden you can take one of three options: take Uber (the fastest but most pricey of the choices); take the Montreal Metro Bus 139, 185, 439, or 97 (the cheapest of the choices, but takes the longest time); or take the Verte (Green) line of the Metro subway system and get off at the Pie IX station (fast and affordable choice).
The Garden is part of Espace Pour La Vie – Space for Life – a group of museums which also includes the nearby Biodôme, Biosphère, Insectarium and the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium. Spend at least a day or two visiting these collection of tourist attractions.
(Click the link to view a similar story on the Montreal Botanic Garden: The Montreal Botanical Garden – Vendiola Personal Blog Stories (wordpress.com))
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