The Hatley Park estate was so named in 1889 when the land was purchased by Roland Stuart and Charles St. Aubyn Pearse. The name derives from the ancestral home of the Pearse family in England. When James Dunsmuir purchased the land in 1907, he acquired some surrounding property to expand the estate and hired Samuel Maclure to design the large family home, now known as Hatley Castle. In 1911, unsatisfied with the estate layout, Dunsmuir hired Brett and Hall, a Boston-based landscaping company, to develop the estate and model farm.
While the castle was under construction from 1908-1910, Dunsmuir also hired a Japanese gardener, Isaburo Kishida, to install a Japanese garden to the west of the family home. The garden was maintained and expanded by another Japanese gardener, Tadashi Noda, between 1913 and 1927.
In 1937, when Laura Dunsmuir died, the estate was managed by trustees until it was sold to the Canadian government in 1940. Various attempts were made to sell the property, including a promotional film by Douglas Flintoff.
Images show the Japanese gardens at various points in time, as well as some of the other buildings on the estate besides the castle. Also in this series are some pictures of Roland Stuart’s Hatley Park Estate.
