Teeny Tiny Garden Tour 2024

Victoria, BC, is surely the queen of garden cities, particularly in spring and early summer. My sister and I visited 7 of the 11 gardens open to the public during the Teeny Tiny Garden Tour hosted by the Victoria Hospice on June 9.

All of the gardens we visited were in Cordova Bay, and they weren’t as small as the ones we had visited 2 years ago, but they were all lovely, brimming with roses, peonies, and clematis with tranquil water features. It was hard to believe how much some people packed into their gardens and how much time they must have dedicated to designing, planting, and maintaining them.

An Abundance of Flowers

Peonies are such exuberant flowers with their large, many-petalled blooms.

Clematis are more discreet, but they certainly put on a good show.

Last, but certainly not least, there were roses in such a wide array of colours.

Ponds and Waterfalls

Ponds don’t have to be large. This one was in a large tub.

The waterfall created such a calm, quiet corner in the garden.

There were goldfish in this pond with an assortment of animal figurines surrounding it.

Whimsy

There were plenty of ornaments to admire as always. The heron was particularly lovely.

My Favorite Garden

My favorite garden had been transformed over the past 34 years from a blast rock-strewn lot into an abundance of plants and shrubs. The front garden was so jam-packed with deer-proof shrubs that it resembled a maze with gravel paths wending their way through the greenery.

There were formal elements to the back garden as well as a garden patch overflowing with lettuce, spinach, and kale.