Flower power

Apropos your report (21 January), about the sale of Rubislaw Quarry in Aberdeen, and its potential uses, one of the highlights of a holiday my wife and I had in Canada in 2004 was a trip to the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, which occupy the site of a former limestone quarry.

The Butchart started from small beginnings in the early 1900s when the wife of the quarrymaster, fed up looking out from her windows on to the bare slopes of the quarry opposite, started planting a few flowers. The famous Japanese Garden followed in 1906, and the Sunken Garden in 1909, and the Butchart is now regarded as one of the great gardens of the world.

HARRY D WATSON

Braehead Grove

Edinburgh