Botanical Gardens, Montreal, Canada

During the partial re-opening of businesses and tourist attractions during the pandemic, we decided to visit some local attractions here in Montreal.

We visited a couple of museums, but my girlfriend really wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens, as she absolutely loves flowers. I hadn’t been there in quite a few years myself, so I was up for a visit as well!

Botanical Garden Info

• Address: 4101, rue Sherbrooke Est, Montreal, QC
• Hours:
  • Opens: 09:00
  • Closes: between 17:00 & 22:00, depending on the day & time of year
• Time needed to visit: Half a day
• Free Entrance: Usually until end of April or beginning of May, basically until the flowers start to bloom
• Official website: espacepourlavie.ca

Getting There

Getting to the gardens is relatively easy, although if you’re driving like we did, Montreal roads are often randomly blocked due to never-ending road-work, so you may have to take a detour or two. My suggestion is always to use navigation when driving around Montreal, it’ll save you a few headaches - trust me, I speak from experience!

That said, if you drive to the gardens, there is parking, albeit paid parking. It’s not too expensive though as it’s run by the city, and you can pay by credit card. On the other hand, if you like a challenge, try looking for some street parking on the surrounding streets, as during certain times of the day you can park for free on the street … just make sure you check the street parking signs carefully!

Of course, your easiest bet if you’re around the downtown area is the metro! The gardens are located steps (well, the gardens are big, so say maybe a 5 to 10 minute walk?) from the Pie-IX metro station, on the Green line.

Note: The Botanical Garden is also located in the same area as the Biodome, the Insectarium, and the Planetarium. So if you’re looking to visit more than one of these attractions, you can save a bit of money by purchasing a package deal. You can find more info on the official site.

The Gardens

Montréal Botanical Garden National Historic Site of Canada is a botanical garden built in the 20th century, which now occupies a square plot of land of 75 hectares in eastern Montréal, Quebec. It consists of a cultural landscape of formal and picturesque character comprising some thirty thematic gardens, about ten exhibition greenhouses, an arboretum and an “H” shaped administrative pavilion conceived in the Beaux-Arts and Art Deco styles.

[…]

[Montréal Botanical Garden] is one of the most important botanical gardens in the world by virtue of the extent of its collections and facilities, such as its 22,000 plant species and cultivars, ten large exhibition greenhouses, thirty thematic gardens and vast Arboretum;
historicplaces.ca

The Botanical Garden in Montreal, as noted in the snippet just above, is comprised of a number of different gardens, each with their own theme. There are also a number of greenhouses, which are also themed, and contain a variety of plants from around the world.

When I booked our tickets in advance online, which you can do on the official site, I wasn’t aware that at that particular time the exterior gardens were actually FREE!!

Now I’ve tried a few times to get the exact dates of when the exterior gardens are free, but to no avail. Essentially, they’re free during the times of the year when plant life is just starting to bloom, or just finishing. So basically, early spring and late fall.

That said, while you can access the exterior gardens for free during those times of the year, the greenhouse gardens, which are quite beautiful as well, still require a paid ticket. So it’s not like we wasted our money, and the tickets aren’t expensive anyway.

Entrance fee: $12.75 CAD per adult

We started with the greenhouse(s), which while they’re in different sections, are all connected, so you can walk from one to the other without having to go outside. This is great if it’s raining, or if it’s cold outside, as it was when we first arrived.

Greenhouses

When you first walk into the greenhouse, you enter a section with a variety of green plants. To the left of the image below, there’s actually some really cool looking trees and plants, as well as a water-display, but you pass by it on the way out, so we didn’t head there just yet.

Once you head right, and past the next set of automatic doors, things get much more colourful and tropical!

There are so many species of plants here, most of which I’m sure I don’t know, and certainly can’t recall the names of. But they’re beautiful nonetheless.

There’s also a nice little waterfall at the end of this side, which makes for a nice relaxing environment, but also a great photo opportunity!

Next up was the cactus greenhouse, which was quite interesting. Considering Montreal’s climate, I don’t have much access to cacti other than the small ones they sell in some shops, so it was interesting to see so many different varieties here.

There were even some, errr, shall we say “well hung” cacti! 😉

And then finally, at the other end of the greenhouse, there’s a bit of a zen garden with a little pond.

Next up, we headed to the exterior gardens, starting with my favourite - the Chinese Gardens!

Chinese Gardens

I’ve been to I think about 7 or 8 cities in China in previous years, so it’s interesting to see the Chinese Gardens here. The temples and structures are, at least to me anyway, very accurate to what you’d see in China (minus the long history of course). So I think what they’ve done here with the Chinese Gardens is really impressive.

Now while you can enter the tower in the pic above, as far as I’m aware, the pagoda below isn’t open to visitors except during exhibitions. That’s been the case when I’ve visited in the past, and it was the case this time as well.

After the Chinese Gardens, we headed off to the Japanese Gardens, which are close by.

Japanese Gardens

The Japanese Gardens are also really beautifully done. Unlike the Chinese Gardens though, you don’t have any pagodas here, just some beautiful, serene, relaxing landscaping.

Because of the time of year we visited, and the temperature this time of year, a lot of the exterior gardens were yet to bloom. Thankfully though, something we were both really hoping to see, the cherry blossoms, were in full bloom!

After that, we checked out a few more of the exterior gardens, but as I mentioned, a lot of them were still in the process of blooming. So there wasn’t really much else to see unfortunately.

It was also starting to rain, so we decided at this point to just call it a day and head back home.

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Final Thoughts

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, although I bought tickets for the Botanical Gardens, the exterior gardens were actually free at the time we visited. So if you are going to visit the gardens early spring or late fall, and only care about the exterior gardens, call before you go to see if access is still free.

Otherwise, I’d suggest coming as of May, when the gardens are likelier to be in full bloom, and you can see a lot more variety of plants and flowers.

That said, the Botanical Garden in Montreal is an absolutely beautiful place to visit, and I’d highly recommend it if you’re in Montréal!