Friesen's Country Tyme Garden

Friesen's Country Tyme Garden sits on Kalamalka Road, on the stretch that mixes houses with the small roadside enterprises, market gardens among them, that Coldstream grew up around. A name built around a garden points to the sort of business the valley bottom has always carried, a plant nursery, a greenhouse or a roadside produce stand far more often than a dining room, and those two possibilities call for very different trips: a table for lunch, or a car boot full of shrubs and vegetables on the way back from the lake.

Anything seasonal on this road works to a narrow calendar. Bedding plants and starts belong to spring, produce comes through late summer and into the autumn, and the quiet months between can mean shortened hours or a closed gate. The phone number is (250) 549-3587, and one call settles what is being sold, what is ready this week and when the doors are open, which is worth doing before you set out with a plan in mind. If you want a quantity of anything, ask whether it can be held aside, since small growers sell out of a variety and wait on the next planting rather than reordering it.