Fantasy Gardens

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since August 2006.

A panorama of Fantasy Gardens.

Fantasy Gardens is a former amusement park in Richmond, British Columbia that is located at the corner of Steveston Highway and No. 5 Road. The park is called Fantasy Gardens because it is surrounded by a series of stone buildings that have the appearance of having been built during the Middle Ages. These buildings look so genuinely ancient that they have been used as a backdrop in numerous music videos, television productions, and movies (it stood in for Halloweentown in Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge).

Behind the stone buildings are the Biblical Gardens. These gardens are filled with numerous religious icons, including a hedge that has been carved into the shape of a Bible.

In 1984 the gardens were bought by Bill Vander Zalm, who established the Christian theme of much of the park. Then a provincial MLA, Vander Zalm went on to be Premier of British Columbia. His later sale of the park led to charges of conflict of interest, which in turn led to his resignation in 1991 and the defeat of the Social Credit government.

During the 1980s and early 1990s there was a small-scale amusement park at Fantasy Gardens. The biggest attraction was a miniature railroad that visitors could ride throughout the park and the gardens. When the fair closed down, most of the miniature railroad tracks were ripped up. Before being closed, this miniature railroad was filmed and it appeared in the X-Files episode "The Calusari." During this episode, a toddler chases a balloon that is being carried away by a ghost, and he runs on to the track and is hit and killed by the train.

Recently, Fantasy Gardens was home to a massive plant store in the Art Knapp's chain, owned by Bill Vander Zalm's son, Wim. Many people visited the store to get a glimpse of its turtle-filled pond. This plant store closed its location at Fantasy Gardens, moving to a vacant nursery one mile west along Steveston Highway at No. 4 Road.