Treat Mom to a musical garden tour

Treat the garden lover in your life to a day of beautiful flowers and fine foliage at the Victoria Conservatory of Music’s Mother’s Day Musical Garden Tour, which runs Saturday and Sunday in Victoria.

The fundraising tour, in its 35th year, features spring botanical splendour at 10 private gardens. Themes range from native foliage to showy exotic blooms (palms, calla lilies and even bananas). From old-school flowering beds to contemporary container displays; from rural garden expanses to fragrant city oases.

“The garden variety this year is stupendous,” said Jane Butler McGregor, CEO of the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

In the gardens, visitors will be serenaded with music performed by students from the conservatory, teachers and special guest musicians.

A special treat this year is the inclusion of a mountain train garden featuring running trains, rocks, plants, varieties of ground cover and a pond. It represents a narrow-gauge mountain railroad — to the scale of 1 to 22.5.

There is a plant sale and, following a challenge issued to many plant nurseries in the region, there will be a contest for the most outstanding planter. Entries will be available for purchase after the winner is chosen.

Money raised by the tour helps the conservatory maintain its music programs and events.

A two-day pass for adults is $30, free for children 12 and under. The 10 Victoria-area gardens are open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets at vcm.bc.ca/victoria-garden-tour or purchase in person at the conservatory front desk, 900 Johnson St.