The Bernt Ronning Garden, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

How to get there

Ronning's garden is located on the northern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia Canada. To get there you must go to the city Port Hardy, actually the road is just outside or Port Hardy.

If your coming from the south on HWY 19 take the road to holberg a couple km south of Port Hardy.

Take this road for about 45km to a small town called Holberg.

Follow the signs toward Cape Scott Provincial park, you will drive past a sign on your right. A photo of the sign is here.

History of the Bernt Ronning Garden

Bernt Ronning established his home here in 1910 (that is 100 years ago now!) and continued it into the 1960's. After that the forest partially reclaimed its land. Bernt Ronning, was among other things, an enthusiastic gardner who brought in many exotic species of plants to plant at his home. Although this area has long been, and still is to some extent, quite remote, he manage to do quite wonderful things on his land, which in the end was 5 acres of cleared land.

Along with all sorts offlowers and trees (such as dafodils, cherries, rhododendrons and hundreds more) perhaps the most ffamous part of the garden is the giant true breeding pair of Monkey puzzle trees.

The Monkey Puzzles

These are (well, unfortunately we need to say was now...) some of the largest Monkey puzzles in Canada, and certainly the largest breeding pair (these have produced many viable seed).

It saddened me to see that 10 years after my first visit, in 2008, one of the trees was a merestump in the ground. Really too bad. I have a box of negatives back home in canada where I have shots of the pair in their former glory, I will try and find them next time I am in Canada and upload them here.

Today many smaller monkey puzzle trees are being grown, and can even be purchased. Money well spent seen as this place is run by volunteered time and frankly this place is OUT OF THE WAY and sees very little donation money I would think.

Contact info Ron & Julie Moe Box 105 Holberg, B.C. V0N 1Z0 Canada TEL: (250) 288-3724