A couple weeks ago I traveled up to Canada to teach some spoon carving classes! What I didn't expect was to see how lush and green Vancouver Island really is! The weather was a little rainy at times, but over all it was a beautiful trip! We started our trip by traveling to Victoria, BC. It was a small to medium sized city with beautiful parliament buildings built in the 1800's and gorgeous gardens.

Butchart Gardens was absolutely beautiful. To me it seemed like the Disney Land version of Gardens. Founded in the early 1900's, these gardens are some of the oldest in Canada. Set up around a limestone quarry grounds, a wealthy wife of the cement company wanted to bring beauty to the area. She first started in the Sunken Gardens (above) and moved onto making an Italian Garden, Japanese Garden and more. It was certainly a breath taking view and we enjoyed walking around each garden taking in all of the different plants.

Walking around the Japanese Gardens. They had small ponds, bridges and of course tons of Ginko trees!