A Visit the Burlington Royal Botanical Gardens

The Royal Botanical Gardens are located on the Niagara Escapment near Hamilton Ontario, Canada, and have a stunning setting for the grounds.

Wheather you are looking for a concentrated botanical experience, or just want to meander in truly lovely settings then it's well worth the visit. We went for lunch and for quality time with the family.

Unless you are superman, don't plan to see everything. You could walk for days and never see the same thing twice I think.

The Royal Botanical Gardens has 2400 acres of natural lands. These are accessed by 27 kilometres of walking trails.

They are world famous for their lilac collection.

Of course there are greenhouses with hothouse specimen plants complete with model railway and coi pond.

One of the nice things about the gardens is the variety and contrast of gardens. There are formal walks, rock gardens, hidden knooks, pavillions, an arboretum, boardwalks, wild woods with birds and other critters, ponds, vegetable gardens and glorious sculptures everywhere.

The sculptures alone are worth a trip.

Oh, and there are lots of plants too.

In one of the greenhouse there is a model train track and models of famous landmarks. The Eiffel Tower was there as were the Petra Treasury, The Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa! These were all made of plant material, sticks and bark.

Sculptures are nicely integrated in the scenery and fits surprisingly well.

Here a tangle of branches with ... imitation bird nests. Fish watch you from the pond.

There are lots of water features and some of the gardens border Hamilton Harbour.

A boardwalk brings you down to the bottom of a valley for a stunning walk in a mature wooded ares. A great pleasure is feeding the little birds. They are quite tame and the chicadees and nuthatches will eat from your hand. We were told the blue jays will also come for peanuts but there were none when we were there. Bring sunflower seeds and peanuts.

The Botanical Garden has a bee house. These are not honey bees but rather burrow into wood. If you go and open the side and back you can see the bee pupa. They are pollinators and can be encouraged by setting up little bee houses in protected areas.

The house looks like an oversize birdhouse with wood panel in the front. In this panel many holes have been made. These holes lead to long cavities that you can see from the back and side. They have placed plexiglass windows over the cavity so you can see the insects inside. It is dark inside when the door is closed.

There are a large number of sculptures both inside the main building and outside in the gardens. I think they are well worth a trip on their own.

There are also specimen plants and seasonal plantings. Lots of fall foliage when we were there.

These were panels in a display area. There were several more. Plywood cutouts.

There is also a fun playground.

The Royal Botanical Garden also hosts private functions and while we were there they were just starting a very posh wedding reception. The newly wed did not have to go far to get nice photos.