Vancouver Spring Gardens

I went to visit my brother in Vancouver for a few days. He and my sister in law have a new family, twins born in December. I did not plan to see much in the way of gardens, as it is still April, but it turned out that spring arrived early in Vancouver. I have only visited there twice, once when I was eight years old and paid no attention to flowers, and once in November when there was not much left to see in gardens. I planned on putting all my attention on two beautiful baby girls, but as the sun was shining for two days in a row, we did manage to get one or two babies outside for a walk. I also went on the back balcony a couple of times with a tired, cranky baby for some fresh air and distraction. Each time I could not help but be overwhelmed by the lush exuberance of the flowering trees and bushes. I had just missed the tulips and daffodils, although the stems were still visible with a few last blooms. What struck me is that there were trees abloom with flowers I have never seen growing outside, or in such sizes. Camelia and rhododendron trees, huge electric pink azalea bushes, cherry trees and magnolias and red and pink bushes which we could not identify.

This is the view from the lane next to my brother's house (above). The photos here are taken on a quick walk down the block, in their front yard and back yard and around the corner. It took me about 5 minutes to cover this area even while stopping to take photos. I took almost 60 photos, and between feeding and changing diapers my brother and I chose the best pics to post. He recently took some photography lessons and showed me some tricks to improve the lighting of the photos. I did not pick the brightest time of the day, I went out when the babies were quiet so it was already getting cloudier. I did not let him change the colours beyond what they actually looked like in the sun. It really was this spectacular. To the right is his neighbour.

My brother says that Vancouver has been encouraging citizens to cultivate green spaces on sidewalks, so technically this is not guerilla gardening, nor city gardens.

To the right you can see yellow tulips, orange poppies, pink bleeding hearts and something electric pink.  I am not sure what the purple flowers are, maybe irises. It seems that Vancouver explodes into blossom where Montreal gradually phases into spring.

Every possible variety of red leaved, green leaved and red stemmed Japanese maples adorn lawns and public spaces.

These flowers were growing in front of my brother's house. After inquiring about what they are, my sister-in-law's mother (a first time contributor to my blog, thank you Joan!) has identified them as hellebore. They do not grow in my neck of the woods unfortunately because they are so pretty!

This is the view from my brother's back balcony. Rhododendrons, magnolias, Japanese maple and those pink flowered bushes are in the foreground. The pink on the lower left at the back is an azalea bush in full bloom, which looks solid from a distance. I did not include the camelia tree, which my brother called sunny side up egg flowers, because the flowers were starting to turn brown on the edges. I arrived a few days past their peak.

Here is the front yard. On the right and below, the red azaleas and purple periwinkles are a bit small to see in detail.