The celebration of Vancouver’s rain is a unifying theme throughout Hastings Park, but nowhere is it more intentional than in the Italian Rain Garden. This area of the park was the second phase of the 1996 Restoration Plan to be implemented and has become a wildly popular social heart in the park. These gardens offer program elements and multicultural activities for children, youth and seniors.

The formal patterning of the site is expressed in paving and planting areas and is structured by crisp landscape walls located on historic foundations and recalling the history of the exhibition grounds. The complex pattern of spaces permits a layering and close juxtaposition of activities for all ages and cultural groups.

True to its name, water is the unifying theme of these rain gardens with runnels, channels, fanciful gargoyles and gods of weather all contributing to the celebration of Vancouver’s rain.