Playing Tourists At Home When Company Comes

You know how it is - you visit the local sites when company comes.

The most popular place to visit with our company is Butchart Gardens which are not far from home.

From early spring there is a spectacular show of blooms until late in the fall.

Japanese Garden

Every visit I see landscaping ideas.

Here is a multi-functional edging that fits my garden design requirements.

Shakkei design in Butchart Gardens - a Japanese garden design concept literally meaning 'the borrowing of scenery.' The garden elements - a round hole in a cedar hedge - take advantage of appealing elements in the distant landscape - the tranquil Todd Inlet with boats.

Within its well-designed gardens, Butchart offers the wide range of scale designers aim for - the micro view of a bloom at one's feet to the macro view of plantings across the expanse of a worked out quarry.

Another popular spot we take our company is Sooke Harbour House after a drive through a forest and along the shoreline. I love to search out the newest art in the garden as well as checking their organic food gardens.

This aged, split cedar screen does the job of screening off a temporary event tent giving some privacy to those on either side.

And of course, there is the art littered everywhere inside Sooke Harbour House.

Having company keeps us continuing to explore where we live when we find the new and re-explore when we thought was familiar.