VanDusen houses a collection of several sculptures, including fountains, sited throughout the Garden. Eleven larger stone sculptures were created at the Vancouver International Stone Sculpture Symposium, held here in 1975. Additional sculptures came to the Garden as gifts or were commissioned by VanDusen Botanical Garden Association (VBGA).

The Vancouver International Stone Sculpture Symposium

Hosted by Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr School of Art), under the direction of Gerhard Class, The Vancouver International Stone Sculpture Symposium invited 12 internationally-renowned artists to spend the summer of 1975 in the newly opened VanDusen Botanical Garden creating sculptures with the assistance of 24 students from the school. The artists were given a choice of site at the Garden and stone (either marble from Turkey and Iran or travertine from Turkey). Donated by Debro Construction Company, the stone arrived in Vancouver as ballast in ships.

The participating sculptors were Hiromi Akiyama (France/Japan), Joan Gambioli (Canada), Mathias Heitz (Austria), Olga Jancic (Yugoslavia), Wolfgang Kubach and Anna-Maria Wilmsen-Kubach (Germany), David Franklin Marshall (Canada), Michael Prentice (France/USA), 'Piqtoukun' David Ruben (Canada), Adolf Ryska (Poland), Jiro Sugawara (Italy/Japan) and Kiyoshi Takahashi (Japan).

Retired VanDusen Curator R. Roy Forster, O.C. commented on the role of the sculptures as "they give a monumental character of scale to the overall landscape. One definition of good garden sculpture is that once admired, it should blend and almost disappear in the landscape, not detracting one's attention from the living collections. This may be the reason why abstract sculpture is sometimes more successful than the representational kind which may evoke images that impinge too much on the quiet flow of ideas that one likes to enjoy in a garden".

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