Hatley Castle

Hatley Park National Historic Site is located in Colwood, British Columbia, in Greater Victoria. It is the site of Hatley Castle, a Classified Federal Heritage Building. Since 1995, the mansion and estate have been used for the public Royal Roads University. From the 1940s to 1995, it was used for the Royal Roads Military College, a naval training facility. The extensive grounds of the historic site have formal gardens, former farmland, and trails through mature stands of first and second-growth forest, including large Douglas fir and western red cedar. In 1912, the Dunsmuirs engaged the American landscape architects Franklin Brett and George D. Hall of Boston, students of Frederick Law Olmsted, to develop a landscape for the entire site. They prepared a classic design for an Edwardian park that included the overall layout for the entire property. The plan organized the estate into four distinct landscape zones, progressing from a series of nine formal 'garden rooms' near Hatley Castle, to recreational spaces, then to agricultural lands, and finally to the forest surrounding the estate. During the Dunsmuir era, approximately 100 gardeners and groundskeepers tended the estate. During the years when the cadets attended Royal Roads Military College, the Department of National Defence employed approximately 50 gardeners and groundskeepers to maintain the property; a testimony to their commitment to retain the integrity of the estate. The Edwardian estate is located on southern Vancouver Island and has views of the Olympic Mountains in the U.S. The gardens are an 565-acre (2.29 km2) estate, including the house's park, and are also a popular wedding location. Today, Royal Roads University employs five full-time gardeners, one arborist, a garden curator, seven seasonal gardeners and groundskeepers, and one manager. As the university does not receive any federal, provincial or municipal funding to maintain the site, the gardeners must make choices about the areas that can be best presented. They have made the Japanese, Rose and Italian gardens the showcase areas of the property. In June 2006, citing the unfunded costs of heritage preservation, the university started charging admission fees to its main heritage gardens, an area that makes up less than five per cent of the 565-acre (2.29 km2) campus. This prompted some public controversy for the $12 for adults in the summer and $6 during the winter fees, which helped subsidise $550,000 yearly maintenance costs (a fee which since risen), but the garden fee only brought $40,000 a year. It also introduced a $15 four-month summer garden pass for residents of Greater Victoria, in addition to the free pass offered to residents of Colwood. As of 2019 the fee was cancelled and the gardens are free to visit. #hatleycastle #britishcolumbia