TO  WITNEY  WITH  SWEET  PEAS  AND  ROSES   On  Saturday, 10 July,  2010

Our son, Adrian, exhibits Sweet Peas and in the list of shows given in his Society Annual was the Witney Sweet Pea and Rose Show.  The schedule included eleven classes for Sweet Peas and also ten for Roses which included large flowered, clusters and miniatures.  Adrian was keen to enter so suggested we join him and enter a few of the Rose classes.  Although a good time for Sweet Peas it was just about the worst for Roses and our garden was almost bare due to the unusually early season, but after the disappointment of Shugborough it sounded like the chance of a “good day out” in the Cotswolds and the opportunity to meet other Rose lovers.

Sheila and I met up with Adrian very early near Stafford to make the journey to Witney with the few Roses I managed to find, and an abundance of Sweet Peas.

We duly arrived at the venue for staging at 8am at the modern and award-winning Church Hall attached to Witney Methodist Church.  We received a very warm welcome from the Show Secretary, Mr Witt, who was very well organised with all equip- ment to hand and all the classes clearly marked.Unfortunately, he said the entries were a bit down on previous years, but by 10.30am the hall was pretty full, with the Sweet Pea exhibits in particular looking excellent.  In the end I managed to stage in five classes using practically every rose I had taken.  During staging we had been wonderfully entertained by a large children’s choir who were rehearsing in the main Church which was linked to the Church Hall by an open social area where drinks and snacks were being served.  At judging time we left the hall to have a stroll around Witney in the sunshine and enjoy a drink at a pavement café to “watch the world go by”.

I am pleased to say that when returning for the results of the judging, Adrian and I found we had both done well – Adrian especially as he was up against some strong opposition – a total of eleven first prizes and five trophies between us and myself an RNRS Bronze Medal.  This was awarded for the Best Exhibit of roses – a vase of five stems of cluster flowered comprising Sexy Rexy, Anne Harkness and the lovely bright orange Betty Harkness.

Before returning again for the presentation of trophies at 4pm we were fortunate enough to watch the very colourful parade through the town as it happened to be Carnival Day and huge crowds everywhere.  We found an excellent open air market to browse around buying everything from old books and plants to lovely cakes!!

Back at the Church for the presentation of the trophies we had hoped that this would be done by the local MP David Cameron PM.  Unfortunately  he was otherwise engaged but the Deputy Mayor made an able substitute.

Following this, the Chairman of the Society appealed for more local support to help keep the Society, which had been in existence for 60 years, afloat.  We can sympathise with him as this is happening to many societies.  He also very kindly thanked the “Evans Family” for making the journey and contributing so much to the show.  He then presented a bouquet of Sweet Peas to the Deputy Mayoress, arranged by Sheila from Adrian’s spares bucket!

We made our journey home after having a most enjoyable day in this lovely South Cotswolds town, and I think we can all fully recommend it to anyone who would like to make the journey and who will be sure of a very friendly welcome by all concerned.

 

                                                                              Roy Evans

 

The Butchart Gardens    Vancouver Island British Columbia

Four and a half thousand miles is a long way to go to see a rose garden  . . . but if you are lucky enough to be traveling to Canada’s West coast as my family and I were this summer then a visit to The Butchart Gardens - with over 100 varieties of hybrid tea roses alongside 400 grandiflora and climbing roses and 64 types of floribunda from all over the world is not to be missed.

The Butchart Gardens is now one of the world's premier floral show gardens, but it wasn’t always this way.

The site was originally a limestone quarry for Canadian businessman Robert Pim Butchart who in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s made his fortune making newly invented concrete - supplying  city engineers as they developed Canada’s West and the Pacific railroad.  He and his wife converted this limestone quarry on the Saanich Peninsula that supplied his business into one of the most revered formal gardens in the world.

We had only a vague inkling before we went that the gardens might be a good place to visit and had no idea that they contained such a great collection of roses. We went to see the Rocky Mountains of course; rising majestically from the plains of Alberta and British Columbia in the vast openness of the Canadian West they provide a striking backdrop to one of the worlds in places to be – Vancouver.

But fifty miles off the coast is Vancouver Island – quieter, unspoiled, and friendlier and just 15 miles from Victoria (capital of British Columbia) is the gem that is Butchart Gardens.  We had a busy itinerary and I really didn’t expect to have time to visit but as luck would have it we drove straight past the signs to the Gardens on the way to the ferry at Swartz Bay.  We are so glad we stopped by.

Jennie Butchart – by her own admission knowing nothing about gardening, began to shape this magnificent landscape in 1904. She established, in the style of the grand estates of the period, several distinct gardens to evoke a range of aesthetic experiences. The then abandoned limestone quarry was transformed into the dramatic Sunken Garden, with ton after ton of topsoil brought in by horse and

cart from a neighbouring farm - an enormous undertaking. This, the spectacular Sunken Garden, was followed by the Japanese Garden in 1906 designed by Isaburo Kishida, an Italian Garden, and in 1930 the Rose Garden.

Alongside the roses there are over 1,000 varieties of other plants and trees, including dramatic massed plantings with 100,000 tulip bulbs planted each autumn by a team of over 50 gardeners. Each year over 1,000,000 bedding plants in some 700 varieties are used throughout the Gardens to ensure uninterrupted blooms from March to October.

I have been lucky enough to walk though some beautiful gardens - the Touileries in Paris, Isola Bella Gardens in Lake Maggiori Northern Italy, the Gardens of the Royal Palace in Bangkok and Alnwick Garden in Northumberland – one of my favorites in England, but Butchart, now enjoyed by over 1.2 million visitors each year is a really wonderful place. Travelers from all over the world walk reverentially around the stunning vistas and manicured paths, excited and awe inspired.

The renown of Mrs. Butchart's gardening quickly spread. By the 1920s more than fifty thousand people came each year to see her creation (18,000 cups of tea were served in 1915!) In a gesture toward all their visitors, the hospitable Butchart’s christened their estate "Benvenuto", the Italian word for "Welcome". To extend the welcome, 566 flowering cherry trees along Benvenuto Avenue leading to The Gardens were purchased from Yokohama Nursery in Japan and installed from West Saanich Road to The Butchart Gardens' entrance.

The garden became neglected due to shortage of manpower in the Second World War and with the Butchart’s in old age moving to Victoria it was left for their daughters to care for the estate.  But it was the Butchart’s grandson – R Ian Ross returning from the Navy following the War who inherited the gardens from his Grandparents and with his Chicago born wife Ann-Lee restored and developed the Gardens into the spectacle we see today.  Ian Ross was awarded the Order of Canada in 1992, he died in 1997 but the Gardens are still owned by the family.

Butchart has the large rose garden that is almost essential in any garden that seeks to draw large numbers of tourists. This one is just stunning, blooming unceasingly from early summer into autumn, thanks to the beneficial climate of Vancouver Island, where days are sunny and mild and nights have the evening cool that seems to suit roses. Unusually very few plants are labelled but a few familiar names appeared: ‘Peace’, ‘Red Devil’, ‘Iceberg’, but most to me at least kept their identity secret.                                              

Climbing and rambling roses spill over trellises and arches and pergolas, and hybrid tea roses and floribundas grow in informal beds along walkways that permit closer inspection of any rose that catches the eye from afar. The warm afternoon air of late summer was fragrant with rose perfume

During the summer now there are concerts each night, and firework displays on Saturdays right after dusk but I like to think it’s the roses bring in the crowds. The attraction of the rose is world wide and with roses from all over the world Butchart should be reserved a special place in the heart of all rose lovers – it certainly has mine.

In 2004, its centenary, the Butchart Gardens were designated as a National Historic Site of Canada.                                                                                          

                                                                                Adrian Evans

Adrian Evans is the son of Roy Evans, the Chairman of the West Midlands Rose Society