One of the most magical places arguably in the world, is the Butchart Gardens located in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia. According to the Butchart Garden’s main website, the gardens began as a cement plant in 1904 when husband and wife Robert and Jennie Butchart purchased the land. After the land was done being used for cement deposits, the wife envisioned a grand garden in its place. The gardens production began in 1912 shortly after the land was purchased. In 1939, the gardens were finally turned into an attraction for the public and they are still operating today.
Photo by Macey Ausbrooks
I recently had the pleasure of visiting these beautiful gardens and experienced their beauty close up. The image above is a photo I took while visiting the infamous “sunken garden” where there were foggy mountains and a large array of colored flower beds. The image that I captured was on a cold and rainy day in October, when all the botanicals were wet and the colors were vibrant.
The image below shows the same angle of the Butchart Gardens, but on a sunny day in July of 2011. The image was taken from Wikimedia Commons by an individual named Weixi Zeng. Just from looking at the photos you can see how much the landscaping has changed over the last decade. The structure of the walking paths and the layout of each flower bed has also changed drastically over the years.
Weixi Zeng, CC, via Wikimedia Commons
The last image shown below is an AI drawn photo of the sunken gardens. You can see many similarities throughout all three of the images in this post, but the AI version has the botanicals looking much more vibrant than the other images. The angle of the Google AI image represents that of the other two images that were taken and you can see the same mountain protruding in the background. The overall quality of the AI image is not as defined and realistic as the other images, which shows how AI can sometimes be an unreliable tool to depict landscapes and historical monuments.
Image of the Sunken Garden at the Butchart Garden’s generated by author through Google Gemini AI platform.