Bois-de-Coulonge Park

This guide to Bois-de-Coulonge Park in Quebec City starts with a wooden miniature of a castle in the old stable block, the only version left of a vice-regal residence that burned twice. It traces the estate to 1835, when merchant Henry Atkinson turned it into one of North America's finest show gardens, and to 1854, when the government bought its choicest slice to build a residence for a governor general. You'll hear how the first mansion burned within six years and was rebuilt in 1862 with a winter garden, before Quebec's government took over the whole estate in 1870. Walk the gardens Atkinson planted, on land two governments once paid dearly to own.