VanDusen Botanical Garden

This guide to VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver traces how fifty-five acres of leased golf course, threatened with subdivision as its lease neared its end, survived a public campaign and two referendums before the city bought the land in 1970. It follows the ballast stone that crossed the ocean in ship hulls, and the carvers still chiseling it into shape in the days before the garden's ribbon-cutting in 1975. You'll hear about lumberman Whitford Julian VanDusen's quiet, anonymous gift that covered a third of the purchase price. Listen for how a fight over a golf course's future shaped the garden you're standing in now.