Montreal’s combined French and British heritage has inspired the city's love of flowers. Parks and gardens all over the city are covered with bright blossoms and tiny front yards of row houses are filled with flowers, from the earliest crocus bursting through the snow in early spring through the autumn’s final yellow chrysanthemum. The city is a pleasure for plant-loving travelers.
A Year Round Garden for the Senses
Gardeners should go first to the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) for inspiration. Here more than 185 acres (73 hectares) of gardens form the second largest botanic garden in the world. Twenty-six separate outdoor gardens display more than 26,000 species of plants. The rose gardens alone are worth the visit. The Chinese Garden, with a pool, pagodas and pavilion, is the largest outside of China, and it also contains a Moon Garden. A short distance away, the Japanese Garden has the largest collection of bonsai (miniature trees) outside of Asia.
Gardens Even in Winter
But the Montreal Botanical Garden is a place to visit even when snow covers the city. In addition to the expansive outdoor gardens, the Botanical Garden also has 10 exhibit greenhouses that reproduce the different ecosystems needed to grow rare plants from all around the world. Part of the University of Montreal, this Botanical Garden is not a boring storehouse of plants. These warm buildings create a jungle experience of trees, bushes, spice trees, orchids and tropical fruits seldom experienced outside of the jungles of Africa, Asia, South America and the Spice Islands of the Pacific. An entire greenhouse is dedicated to orchids, another to cactus and another to miniature Chinese gardens.
Each season has its special exhibits here, too. At Halloween, mysterious tombstones appear among the cactus, and giant paper bats fly overhead. School children bring their most fantastic jack-o-lanterns to display here among the plants. At Christmas, people travel for miles to see the one large greenhouse that is turned into a holiday fantasy world.
Floralies Internationales Island Gardens
On Île Notre-Dame, one of the islands created with the earth removed for building the Montreal Metro system, magnificent gardens were built for the 1980 Floralies Internationales. This horticultural exhibition and competition drew some of the world’s best landscape architects, who covered more than 60 acres with stunning gardens. Now cared for and maintained by Parc Jean-Drapeau gardeners, they include 5,000 rose bushes and 100,000 annuals, as well as perennial gardens and trees, many of which flourish outside their usual zones because of the microclimate created by the island’s lagoons.
Private Gardens in The Plateau
But the Montreal’s love affair with plants goes far beyond this world-class Botanical Garden and the Floralies. Throughout spring, summer and fall, parks and even dooryards in front of private homes on The Plateau are brightened with flowers, making its neighborhoods a delight to stroll through. Be sure too to visit and walk the paths of the beautiful Parc La Fontaine and see the Theatre de Verdure there. It is at Rue Parc La Fontaine at Rue Sherbrooke.
Stillman Rogers - Travel is an important method of learning about the rest of the world and finding our own place in it. Exposure to other culture enriches ...
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