Jennie Butchart had a dream. Confronted with a limestone quarry in her backyard, she visualized that same empty space filled with flowers, ponds and trees. I don’t know if my imagination would have seen the possibilities in that barren space. I suspect I would have looked at that hole in the ground and built a fence to block the view.    I might have planted some flowers along the fence and called it good.

If I had heard about the plan, I would have wondered who would have the energy, time and resources to make something like that happen. Jennie Butchart must have been a formidable woman to get the project started. I wonder how many people thought the the garden she dreamed of was even remotely possible.

I give thanks for  people like Jennie Butchart . . . people who catch a vision of the possible, the rest of us can’t see . . . People who dream beauty into existence.

Today, Butchart Gardens is rated by the National Geographic Society as one of the ten best gardens in the world. In its beauty, it is a little piece of heaven on earth.


“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”  Luke 12:27