President Steenkamp: Half a million visit gardens virtually

Knowing how much our university and broader community have missed the Royal Roads gardens prompted our world-class Multimedia Services and Garden & Grounds teams to “spring” to action and create a virtual gardens update series.

Videographer Dan Anthon captures the magic from the first cherry blossoms of spring to the full summer bloom of the rose garden. Even more so, I’d say he captures the well hewn magic of Barrie Agar, Jeff Wright, Jessie Phillips, Greg Higgs and all the gardeners and groundsworkers.

The overwhelming positive feedback for the virtual garden tours has served as a reminder to me of just how lucky I have been to work on such a beautiful campus—with teams who are so dedicated to caring, creatively, for one another.

People around the world have viewed the videos half a million times. More than 10,000 offering their thanks and appreciation through comments, reactions and sharing the videos with friends.

Here's the full video of the Rose Garden with the wonderful deadheading tip to trim at least six inches down the cane. This will prompt more canes to come up and thus, more roses.

You can see all the videos on YouTube.