Uplands, Victoria (known locally as "the Uplands") is an upper-class neighbourhood located in the north east part of the Municipality of Oak Bay, an adjacent suburb of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and situated between the neighbourhoods of Cadboro Bay and North Oak Bay. Uplands is a prominent example of a garden suburb designed in the early part of the 20th century.
In 1907, the developers of Uplands, John A, Robert and Dawson Turner previously cattle and horse ranchers from Turner Valley Alberta and originally Scotland purchased the area for the sum of $275,000 and hired the leading landscape architect John Olmsted as the designer. Olmsted designed famous neighbourhoods and parks in North America. The Uplands of today is faithful to Olmsted's vision: an elegant neighbourhood with estate-sized lots, serpentine streets and the signature green, globed, ornate lamp posts. The houses are built to impress and the sprawling gardens are carefully manicured.
Uplands has a seaside setting and has within its boundaries the large Uplands Park. Uplands Park is not the manicured park of flower beds and walks that might be expected in such a meticulously designed garden suburb. Rather, it is a wild, seaside expanse of jagged rock crags, trees stunted and shaped by the wind, lonely heaths and dramatic ocean vistas. The wildness of Uplands Park contrasts sharply with the manicured lawns and flower beds in front of the mansions that line Beach Drive, the main road through Uplands.
In keeping with its seaside location, the Royal Victoria Yacht Club is located within the Uplands, and is the oldest yacht club in British Columbia.
Physical Environment
The bedrock under Uplands is quartz diorite gneiss. Soils are well drained sandy loams of the Cadboro and Langford series (Cd-L or Lsl), or poorly drained sandy clay loams of the Tolmie series (Tscl); all have thick dark topsoils. In near-shore areas the soils are more stony and are mapped as Langford-Rough Stony complex(L-Rs).