Is climate change uprooting the traditional garden?

But not all plants — even some typically considered hardy — are immune to the drastic ups and downs of climate change.

A ‘new normal’

The province has seen large-scale impacts of deep freezes in recent years. In 2023, a mid-January cold snap dealt a severe blow to B.C.’s wine industry, with catastrophic crop loss across the Okanagan Valley. Also in the region, farms were devastated by the cold a year later, with extreme temperatures damaging stone-fruit trees and even more grape vines, killing off delicate buds.

Andrea Bellamy, business development manager at Figaro’s Garden in East Vancouver, said the cold didn’t discriminate — all sorts of plants struggled.

“Rhododendrons, for example, are a super hardy plant, but because we had such a mild winter followed by such an intense cold snap, people got severe damage on their rhodos and their sarcocas and all kinds of like really tough plants,” she explained.

Andrea Bellamy, who’s been with Figaro’s since 2022, says she’s seen more and more people come to the garden centre with climate change on the mind. (Hana Mae Nassar/CBC)

“What we thought we knew about gardening may no longer be true. We’ve had to re-examine everything in the face of this weird weather we’re having.”