VanDusen Botanical Garden

Shaughnessy Golf Course Becomes A Garden

The site was the Shaughnessy Golf Course, leased land in the middle of Vancouver's west side, and when the lease lapsed the obvious future was housing. The garden that exists instead carries the name of Whitford Julian VanDusen, a lumberman whose foundation put money behind the campaign to buy the land for a botanical garden.

What you walk on now is jointly operated by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation and the Vancouver Botanical Gardens Association, a charitable non-profit, and the two organisations describe fifty years of working together under a shared vision. The same partnership operates Bloedel Conservatory on the summit of Queen Elizabeth Park, which is why the two admission tables live on one page and why one membership covers both.

Fifty-Five Acres, 7,500 Species

The City's own description is precise: "a 55-acre oasis in the heart of Vancouver with over 7,500 plant species and varieties from around the world". That is the number that separates this place from a park. Vancouver has more free green space than almost any comparable city, and the parks and beaches hub lists all of it, but nothing free in the city holds a collection.

The planting is arranged by geography and by family: Mediterranean and Southern Hemisphere beds, a rhododendron walk, Canadian Heritage Garden, a Sino-Himalayan section, all set around a lake with the North Shore mountains on the skyline behind. In April and May the rhododendrons are the reason people come; in October the maples are.

The Visitor Centre That Won An Award

The Visitor Centre at the entrance is LEED Platinum and was named Most Sustainable Building of the Year in 2014. It is built as a set of curved petals around a central oculus, it harvests its own water and it is the first thing you see, which is unusual for a garden building and deliberate. The Truffles Garden Cafe inside it opens daily during garden hours, running to 5 PM or 6 PM in the growing season depending on the day of the week, and the gift shop opens at 10 AM daily.

The Elizabethan Hedge Maze

The City lists "find your way through the hedge maze" among the five things to do here, and it is the feature that separates VanDusen from every other garden in the region. It is a formal Elizabethan maze in clipped cedar, on the far side of the lake from the Visitor Centre, and it is a real maze rather than a decorative parterre: children lose the exit and adults pretend not to.

It is also the single best argument for bringing a family here rather than to the free parks. Budget twenty minutes for it, more if anybody in the group is under ten, and note it sits at the end of a walk, so a ninety-minute visit that skips the far bank misses it entirely.

The Lake, And What Is Behind It

The garden is built around a lake with the North Shore mountains on the skyline, and the view north across the water is the photograph everyone takes. It is also where the wildlife is: the City lists spotting and photographing local wildlife first among the things to do here, ahead of the maze.

Walk the lake anti-clockwise if you want the mountains in front of you for the second half rather than behind you for the first. There is no published loop distance, so treat any figure you read elsewhere as somebody's watch rather than a measurement.

The Collections, Season By Season

Over 7,500 plant species and varieties means something different every month, which is the real reason the rate bands exist. Rhododendrons and flowering trees carry April and May, which is when the same garden also feeds the city's cherry blossom season on the streets outside. High summer is perennial borders and the Southern Hemisphere beds. October is the maples and the Canadian Heritage Garden.

Winter is the honest weak spot, and the price reflects it: at $8.11 (CA$11.19) with the garden closing at 2 PM, January is a stroll among structure and bark rather than a display. This is also when the Bloedel dome beats it outright for the same money.

Eating, And The Two Options

Truffles Garden Cafe sits in the Visitor Centre and opens daily during garden hours, until 5 PM Monday to Thursday and 6 PM Friday to Sunday in the June to Labour Day window, closed on December 25 and January 1. Shaughnessy Restaurant is the full sit-down option on site. Both are inside the paid area, so neither is a way to visit the garden without a ticket.

If you want the food day instead, the where to eat page names only places a published list names.

The middle row is the visit this page is written for, and the one that includes the maze. The short routing is defensible only in winter, when the garden closes at 2 PM anyway and the ticket costs a third less. Anyone pairing this with the free hill at Queen Elizabeth Park should do the park first: it is smaller, it is free, and it does not close at two.

Seven Hour Changes A Year

The garden opens at 10 AM in January, February, March, November and December, and at 9 AM from April through October. Closing moves seven times: 2 PM in January, February, November and December; 5 PM in March; 5 PM in April; 6 PM in May; 7 PM from June to 7 September; 5 PM from 8 September to 31 October.

The trap is winter. A 2 PM close with a 30-minute last entry means the doors effectively shut at 1:30 PM from November to February, which is earlier than most visitors have finished lunch. Check the month before you plan a morning elsewhere.

Last Entry Is 30 Minutes, Not 15

Last entry here is 30 minutes before closing. At Bloedel Conservatory, run by the same two organisations, it is 15 minutes. The same arrival time therefore works at one site and fails at the other, which is worth knowing if you are doing both in an afternoon.

December 25 is the only closed day. There is no weekly closure and the garden trades through statutory holidays, which is the Vancouver pattern rather than the European one.

Fares below are TransLink's, effective 1 July 2026, read in Q3 2026. Buses are a 1-zone fare at all times, which is what makes the bus the sensible arrival here even from a hotel downtown.

Accessibility

The garden states that "the VanDusen Visitor Centre, Administration Building, Floral Hall, Shaughnessy Restaurant, and most paved garden paths and Bloedel Conservatory are accessible to wheelchairs, mobility scooters and walkers", with the caveat printed alongside it: "Garden pathways, both paved and unpaved, can be uneven." Volunteer motorized cart tours run daily 1 PM to 4 PM from 1 April through Thanksgiving. Parking is free with accessible spaces, and there is an accessible drop-off loop near the front entrance. The accessibility page sets this against the rest of the city.

- There are three rate bands, not two: January to March, April to October, and November to December. Most guides print a single price and are therefore wrong for seven months of the year. [vandusengarden.org hours and admission, read in Q3 2026] - Admission is free to all self-identifying Indigenous Peoples, stated plainly by the garden on its own event listings. [vancouver.ca VanDusen page, read in Q3 2026] - The published prices exclude GST, which is why the adult figures carry odd cents like CA$15.81 and CA$11.19 rather than round numbers. [vandusengarden.org hours and admission, read in Q3 2026] - Parking at the garden is free, in a city where the free hill at Queen Elizabeth Park charges up to CA$15 a day for a car. [vandusengarden.org accessibility page, read in Q3 2026] - Festival of Lights dates for 2026-27 are confirmed as 27 November to 3 January, but no price is published for it anywhere on the City's site: the page says only to check back. [vancouver.ca Festival of Lights page, read in Q3 2026]

It Is A Season Decision, Not A Day Decision

Most attractions in this city are weather decisions. This one is a calendar decision. Between April and October the garden is doing the thing it is built for and the ticket is easy to justify; between November and March it is open for four hours a day at two thirds of the price and reads as a walk rather than a display.

That makes it a first-half-of-the-trip item in summer and a skip in deep winter, when the same money is better spent under glass on Cambie or indoors downtown.

The Best Garden Half Day In The City

Start free on the hill at Queen Elizabeth Park for the quarry gardens and the 125 metre view, pay CA$9.50 for the dome on the summit, then take one bus or a 15-minute drive west and spend the afternoon here. Total adult admission is between $15 and $19 depending on the month, which is less than most single tickets on the things to do hub, and it fills a day without a car, a booking or a queue. Everything else worth pricing before you come is on visiting Vancouver, Canada.