Ellise Guigon’s Grade 4 and 5 students at North Saanich’s Deep Cove Elementary on Vancouver Island spilled out of their classroom and into the schoolyard, ready for an adventure. Armed with their tally sheets and pencils, they trudged through the yard and onto a quiet residential street nearby, hooting and whooping every time they encountered a new patch of blooms, no matter how small.
Their goal was to count as many flowers as they could.
It was the first day of the 2026 Greater Victoria Flower Count: an annual event spanning Greater Victoria’s 14 municipalities that invites people of all ages to count the flowers in their neighbourhoods – usually in early March, when much of Canada is still frozen – and compete for the hilariously wholesome title of Bloomingest Community.
For Guigon’s students, the stakes were high: The participating school classroom that counted the most flowers would win a trip to the Butchart Gardens – in a limousine.
This year was Guigon’s first time participating in the Flower Count with her students. A big part of the appeal, she said, was that it taught them about presence and gratitude.
“I’m trying to give them a real-world experience away from a screen: getting them outside, noticing what’s happening in our environment around us and helping them appreciate it,” she said, as her students eagerly traversed the surrounding terrain.
Using their counting, multiplying and estimation skills, the kids recorded their findings on the worksheets that Guigon made for them (though one boy, inspired by the task, created his own). Before long, most of their shoes were covered in dirt – the surefire sign of a job well done.
Friends Anabelle Millington, 11, and Audrey Bressette, 10, welcomed the chance to get outside and explore.
“I like nature a lot,” said Anabelle.
Audrey agreed: “I really enjoy looking at all the different types of really pretty flowers,” she said. “And finding some different flowers that I didn’t know about.”
Beni Canlas couldn’t wait to use his math skills to multiply his tallies and get a final total.
Nine-year-old Beni Canlas, meanwhile, enjoyed the Flower Count because it involved math. “I like solving problems,” he said. “Multiplication is probably my favourite.” Even before getting to school that day, he spotted some cherry blossoms from the car and dutifully jotted down the numbers. At the end of the count – which this year took place from March 4 to 11 – he planned to use his math skills to multiply his tallies and get a final total.
While the rest of Canada was still in the throes of winter, the Greater Victoria Area was already beginning to show signs of spring: cherry blossom trees were full of fluffy white petals; fields of bright yellow daffodils waved sleepily in the wind; patches of cheerful purple crocuses sat pretty for many dog walkers who stopped to take their photos; and even a few shy magnolia trees revealed their large pink and white blooms, which were the talk of the town among the flower enthusiasts. Magnolias? In March?
Thanks to the Greater Victoria Area’s location on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, it boasts a sub-Mediterranean climate – the mildest in the country.
“The weather conditions make it the best place in Canada for gardening,” said Jean-Guy Gobeil, head gardener for the Fairmont Empress in Victoria. Sometimes, in fact, it’s so mild that it backfires. While walking through the hotel’s famous front gardens during the Flower Count, Gobeil pointed to a plot where some ornamental cabbages had been planted; they didn’t do well this year, he admitted, because it was too warm.
To show off its temperate climes, Destination Greater Victoria – the region’s tourism marketing organization – has been hosting the Flower Count for more than 50 years. Elementary school kids compete for the aforementioned limousine prize; adults, meanwhile, get the simple pleasure of being outside.
“It’s a lighthearted event,” said Sidney, B.C., Mayor Cliff McNeil-Smith, who participates in the Flower Count every year with a few of his neighbours. “It’s a fun way to boost our local pride.”
It’s also a tongue-in-cheek way to gently tease the rest of the country. “For decades, we’ve used it as bragging rights for the rest of Canada about how great our climate is at this time of year,” affirmed Paul Nursey, CEO of Destination Greater Victoria.
The Flower Count has a long history. It all began back in the late 1960s, when a Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce committee – led by legendary local flower lover Norma Fitzsimmons – came up with a good-natured campaign to promote southern Vancouver Island’s mild winters. The committee travelled to ice-strewn cities such as Edmonton and Winnipeg and handed out daffodils: a jovial peace offering from a snowless paradise.
In 1976, the annual project grew to what we know it as today, with locals counting the blooms in their own communities. (And no, they’re not expected to count every single flower in a tree; Destination Greater Victoria works with arborists to provide counting estimations. For example: a large, blossom-filled tree equals 750,000 blooms. As such, the Flower Count is more about participation than precise numbers.)
When all was said and done, the 2026 count recorded more than 86 billion blooms in total. Despite a years-long friendly rivalry between Victoria and Sidney, it was the District of Saanich that nabbed the title of 2026 Bloomingest Community, with a grand total of 43,369,515,424 flowers recorded.
As for Guigon’s class, her students counted an impressive 15,544,054,060 blooms, but it was not enough to win them the coveted limousine ride (instead, that was awarded to a class from Victoria’s Campus View Elementary, which tallied 41,674,200,303). Even so, Guigon called the count a “rich learning experience” and said she has zero hesitations about participating again next year.
And to be fair, it’s not just schoolkids who join in the fun: Many adults tally flowers, too, often by starting in their own gardens and then branching out – pun intended – from there. Born-and-raised Oak Bay resident and full-time gardener Cindy Heavener has been participating in the Flower Count for the past decade.
“At first, I didn’t really understand it: I thought, ‘Oh, we’re just rubbing it in everybody’s faces back East that we have really nice blossoms right now,’” the 57-year-old said. “But now I’m proud of it. I’m proud of living here.” When she gets going, she said, it’s hard to stop: “Once you start doing it, you get really into it; you become super tunnel-visioned to it.”
For 55-year-old Tammy Candela, who manages a legendary local flower shop called Brown’s the Florist that is more than 110 years old, participating in the Flower Count helps her appreciate her own green thumb – and the place she calls home.
“It gets you out in your garden,” she said. “And it makes you realize how lovely it is that you get to be here with all these flowers. Because when you look at the other cities, you’re like, ‘Oh, that poor city.’”
