I'm in between Parksville and Coombs on Vancouver Island. Happy New Year to all Marj

Hi Nancy, Desert King, Lattarula, Negronne, Osborne Prolific are some varieties that will do well in Vancouver. Desert King is the most common & U are assured of a good crop. These are the common ones around Vancouver & there are lots of fig trees in Vancouver(East side & Burnaby). Dave Hunter garden center in Vancouver sells them. If U need to know more, U can email me. Paully

Yes, the winter half of the year will be overcast most all of the time. Temperatures will be cold for 40% of the year, but not extremely so. Most of the time this cold will be just above the freezing point, sometimes just a little bit below. The air is cool and damp. Summer is the driest time of the year, but the summers are short (compared to US standards). The weather though is amazing in summer, just the right temperature, very mild, not too hot, and everything is lush green and bursting with life. By Canadian standards, the climate in Vancouver is considered virtually "subtropical", but that is compared to the rest of Canada. Expect to wear a rain resistant jacket for much of the year. Due to the nature of the rain, constant light drizzle often blowing in with a light wind, umbrellas are not very practical. Puff jackets are the common clothing item. Due to the latitude, the winter time of the year will have very short day length, but the summer time will have very long days. This difference will be noticeable compared to US cities, even including New York and Chicago. During the winter, the nighttime temperatures are almost the same as the days, but during the drier summer half of the year, the nights can get very cool to almost kind of cold. The cost of housing in Vancouver is overpriced. It can be unaffordable for many people to live there. The city has many cultural amenities, but not especially so compared to the biggest US cities.

I disagree with the statement: "...since a native plant, poses no issues with invasive seeding such as both Portuguese and English laurel are prone to do." We planted several Pacific Wax Myrtles in a native garden many years ago and now have wax myrtle seedling popping up every where. So they can become a problem in other peoples flower beds. Both of the evergreen cherries are shade tolerant, the English more so than the Portuguese, so they are problems in wood lots that the wax myrtle wouldn't be. I like wax myrtle more so than the two evergreen cherries because it is native and has smaller leaves. But it has its problems. The wood is brittle breaking under heavy snow loads and with Vancouver B.C being at the mouth of the Frazier River with Artic flows coming down that valley, you get lot more snow than on Vancouver Island. The fall/winter of '10/11 caused a lot of damage to our myrtle with leaf kills, even whole stems, and the snow flattened the bushes. That spring we had to go in an remove all the broken and dead branches. Something that doesn't happen with the two cherries. Portuguese Cherry doesn't get as big as the English Cherry. Its leaves are not that much bigger than the myrtle's. I also noticed that it doesn't have any where near the invasive seedlings that the English cherry has. It might also be found at local nurseries more so than myrtle.