BC, briefly

Last Friday I hopped on a plane and took off for Vancouver, BC—I'd been invited to speak at the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group Study Day on November 2nd. Co-chair of the group Dana Cromie picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to an afternoon of garden visits. On the way to the car I admired this green-wall planting on the airport parking garage.

I'll be posting photos of those gardens in the coming weeks, but today I'm sharing a quick overview of things I saw, like these two buildings I saw on our walk to dinner that night. My eyes were first drawn to the silver building on the right that looks like someone twisted it off center. Then Dana pointed out the missing pieces of the pink building.
There was a fire. Can you imagine? Scary.
He mentioned the twisty building had some interesting landscaping at the base, and we planned to walk by after dinner.
These photos aren't the best, since they were taken after dark, but I'm sharing them anyway. 
It's a mossy amphitheater!
With bamboo...
The Study Day events were held at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, very Jetsons!
The day was a fun one, a fantastic event that I was proud to be a part of, great people all around. My fellow speakers (Tony Spencer and Philip MacDougall) were top notch and the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group was extremely welcoming. 
The cool crab sculpture is the work of a man named George Norris.
I stepped outside at lunch to take a couple photos.

And shot a couple others through the windows...

I also managed a quick stroll around the interior courtyard garden.
Where there were cool fungi.

On Sunday I took a quick walk through a community garden just down the street from the hotel where I stayed. 

Temporary community garden space (their website is here) seems like a huge positive to me, but someone mentioned the city loses out on taxes the developers would otherwise be paying, so perhaps it's not all positive. 
Still, seeing garden plots like these always makes my heart happy. I know what having something like this would have meant to me when I was living in an urban apartment with no soil to plant in.
Someone lost a stubby carrot.
Wow, that's a happy nasturtium.
Flamingos!
And dahlias...
I love the personality of these small planting spaces.
Time to head home! Because I was flying on a small prop plane we boarded out on the tarmac, where there were ferns! 
Polypodium glycyrrhiza I believe. It was a great weekend and I look forward to sharing more soon.