We wanted to venture outside today beyond our soggy backyard, so my hubbie & kids headed back to the UBC Botanical Gardens -our first visit since August. Earlier this week one of my returning signing clients had asked me about the gardens after reading my summer canopy walk post, and I remembered we still hadn’t gone back to check out the cultivated gardens. The canopy walk is now closed for the season, but the forest trails and formal gardens are all open and admission is FREE now until spring! Lots of great exploring for little feet. Here are some photos from our day visiting the cultivated side of the gardens, which were still showing lots of colour and activity despite being November.

My kids loved seeing all the veggies & plants growing in the huge Food Garden area:

Ian chomped on some kale, literally (oops! we realized too late not to pick!):

Have you ever seen a cultivated fruit tree growing flat against a structure? This is the side view of a full apple tree: (how did he get more kale?)

We decided it was WAY more fun to read the Alpine Garden’s trough plant names out loud like they were spells from Harry Potter…


…Scutellaria PONTICA!!

There’s also a beautiful outdoor amphitheatre:

Multilayerd stone & cement walls surround the amphitheatre:

My daughter was inspired to show us the duck calls she learned at outdoor ed camp this week:

To end, we raced the Labrynth around and around to the end -no skipping over lines!

BYE-BYE!