We’re back with more from Susan Esche’s visit to the beautiful University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver in early September. It is open to the public and has many different sections and types of gardens to explore.

Here is the vegetable garden. I love the vine-covered structures that surround it.

Roses are best known for their flowers, of course, but many have very ornamental fruits—called rose hips—after the flowers have faded. These look to be the hips of Rosa moyesii (Zones 5–9), which has deep pink, five-petaled flowers in early summer that are followed by these lovely hips.

The physic garden is full of plants that have been used for medicinal purposes in the past.

Japanese maples (Acer palmatum, Zones 5–9) are beginning to change color for the fall against the backdrop of a classic Pacific Northwest evergreen forest.

Hardy plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, Zones 5–8) is a ground cover that is slow to emerge in the spring and not very noticeable in the first half of the summer. In late summer and fall, however, it really shows off with abundant true-blue flowers that keep on going even as the foliage shifts to red and yellow for fall.

Carefully arranged perennials, shrubs, small trees, and taller trees produce layer upon later of beauty in this garden.

I think these brilliant fruits are those of mountain ash (Sorbus sp.). The color is absolutely fluorescent!

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