Stanley Park Rock Garden

In October 2011, the Stanley Park Pavilion and the nearby Rock Garden celebrated their 100th Anniversary. A celebration was hosted by the Heritage Vancouver Society, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation to mark the centennial of the sites. At the ceremony on October 23 a plaque was unveiled for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s “Places that Matter” commemorative plaque project marking Vancouver’s 125th anniversary (photos below).

   

About the Stanley Park Heritage Rock Garden

The first public garden of the City of Vancouver was begun in 1911 by master gardener John Montgomery from the unwanted boulders excavated for the construction of the new Stanley Park Pavilion. John Montgomery was born in Strachur, Argyll, Scotland on March 24,1844 and immigrated from Peebles, Scotland to Vancouver in 1908. By the age of 67 he was a park gardener in Stanley Park whereupon viewing the new Pavilion excavations had proposed to Park Commissioners that these discarded stones could be put to good use to build a garden rather than simply burying them.

At the Commissioner’s request, Montgomery then produced a sample garden and was ultimately given permission to proceed. For the following nine years until his death in 1920, he created an extensive rock garden complete with rock lined pathways, ponds, arbours and benches. Stretching for almost a mile from Pipeline Road to Coal Harbour, the Rock Garden for decades played a major role as a feature attraction of Stanley Park. An integral part of the Pavilion landscape with its neighbouring Pavilion Garden, they comprised the primary public garden in the city until the creation of the Rose Garden in 1920. The Rock Garden flourished for fifty years until slowly portions became abandoned and disappeared into the forest, the story of the creation of the garden lost with earlier generations.

The story of the Rock Garden remained forgotten until rediscovered in 2000 by a descendant of John Montgomery. The true extent of the rock garden was not realized however, until the devastating wind storm of December 2006 which revealed lost portions of this garden landscape. This early Vancouver landmark retains its prominent role as a historic site in Stanley Park and the City of Vancouver.

The Pavilion at Stanley Park

Rock Garden Stanley Park