The Age of Adaline | VanDusen Botanical Garden — the walk where she lets someone catch up

Ellis does most of the talking. Adaline gives him the practised answers, the ones she has used for decades, and then somewhere along the path she stops using them. The scene is a walk through a garden, which is the least dramatic thing two people can do, and that is exactly why it works.

VanDusen opened in 1975 on land that had been a golf course, fifty-five acres cut into distinct worlds you cross one after another: a Rhododendron Walk, a Southern Hemisphere garden of eucalyptus and monkey puzzle, a Mediterranean slope, still water at Livingstone Lake with turtles hauled out on the logs. There is a hedge maze of about three thousand pyramidal cedars, planted in 1981, one of very few in Canada. The paths curve deliberately so you never see far ahead.

That layout is the point for a visitor. You cannot rush VanDusen. The route bends, a hedge closes behind you, and you end up walking at the pace of whoever you came with — which is the pace at which Adaline finally answers a question honestly.

Come on a weekday morning in late spring, when the rhododendrons are heavy and the garden is mostly staff and regulars. Take the path around the lake counterclockwise and stop at the bench facing the water. Nothing happens there. That is the appeal.

Location photo via Wikimedia Commons.