Royal Botanical Gardens

The RBG covers around one thousand one hundred hectares, which makes it the largest botanical garden in Canada, but only a small fraction is cultivated: most is nature sanctuary protecting Cootes Paradise, a large marsh at the western end of Lake Ontario, with about twenty-seven kilometres of trails through it. The cultivated areas include the Rock Garden, built in the 1930s in a disused gravel pit, and the Katie Osborne Lilac Collection, one of the largest lilac collections in the world with over seven hundred and fifty varieties. A fishway at the marsh mouth screens out invasive carp to let native fish through.

History

The gardens grew from a 1920s idea of Hamilton's Board of Park Management, led by Thomas McQuesten, for a botanical garden on the south shore of Cootes Paradise that would also protect the marsh, and in 1930 King George V allowed the name Royal Botanical Gardens. At the same time the city's gardens on Burlington Heights were laid out, among them the Rock Garden, made by lining a 5.5 acre abandoned gravel pit with Niagara Escarpment limestone; the two were joined as the Royal Botanical Gardens in 1932, a Provincial Act of 1941 set its mandate, and Leslie Laking, director from 1954 to 1981, built it into the institution it is today (Wikipedia, Royal Botanical Gardens - Ontario).

The main sights

• The lilac collection - over 750 varieties, blooming in May.
• The Rock Garden - a 1930s garden built inside an old gravel pit.
• Cootes Paradise - a large marsh sanctuary with trails and boardwalks.
• The carp fishway - a barrier separating invasive fish from native species.

When to go

May for lilacs, which is the signature bloom; April to October for the gardens generally, with the Rock Garden good through the season. Marsh trails are open year-round.

Good to know

The cultivated gardens are in several separate locations kilometres apart, needing a car between them. Lilac bloom is about two weeks. Much of the acreage is trails, not display gardens.

Nearby

Dundurn Castle lies southeast in Hamilton; Webster Falls is west.

Key facts