In the prior years shown below I have tried to keep somewhat of an organized tour through the garden. This year is much more jumbled and I am not always sure exactly which part of the garden in which I found each flower.
These should be mostly the Botanic Garden proper with the Japanese Garden on this other page. They were all so beautiful I seem to be just running around trying to capture everything. The upside down vine flowers that remind me of my grandfather's snap dragons were over by the cafe near the Japanese Garden while the Iris were probably in their main bed outside the Japanese Garden and the roses.
The clock is definitely in the entry and while it has changed from before is no more accurate. The flower beds and water feature I think are part of the main entry.
These beds could have been most anywhere as there were flowers blooming from the main garden all the way over the the rose and Japanese gardens on the other side of the complex.
Just finishing up this visit the rose was probably in the main rose garden over by the Japanese Garden and the remainder were just enjoyable.
Again in this page I'll just be showing photographs from the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and covering the associated Japanese Garden which has a separate entrance and admission charge in this other page. Regardless of the entrance, both are great and just down the street this year we visited the Fort Worth Zoo.
On this visit we spent a lot of time in the conservatory that had been closed when we visited in 2008. Walking behind the waterfall the water was coming down in clear sheets at slightly different angles to look like reassembled strips. The big nuts are on the chocolate tree or actually cacao tree with nuts just about ripe.
Another neat tree had these long fuzzy red streamers that I presume are the flowers that will eventually become seeds.
Looking very carefully on the top left you may pick out the elephant topiary with water pouring out of the trunk. The lower picture is a banana tree although the fruit is well past when it would be picked commercially. When to pick the bananas, light, temperature, and even atmosphere for storage are all critical to getting them to the store just the was each person likes to have them anywhere from totally green to black.
Heading back outside here are just a few of the many variety of spring flowers available in the Fort Worth area. Click here to jump over to the Japanese Garden page.
In this page I'll just be showing photographs from the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and covering the associated Japanese Garden which has a separate entrance and admission charge in this other page. Regardless of the entrance, both are great.
The clock at the garden entry is another of those great ideas that turn out to be a maintenance nightmare, it was broke. Just past the clock is a pair of pools one with an arch fountain on the edges and this one with the big frogs jumping off the ends. The main garden conservatory and entrance is in the background and the end of the pools.
As I recall the flower bed was part of the extensive plantings in front of the conservatory you can barely see at the end of the pool. The finely trimmed tree was on the back side of the conservatory on the path leading to trellis and a formal gazebo area tailor made for weddings and small functions. Throughout the garden is a mixture of formal and informal planting structures that fit well together.
These flowers are some of the special plantings in the gazebo area.
Looking back toward the conservatory is the large lawn very suitable for huge parties and fund raising events and a large modern sculpture which as usual does not make a lot of sense to me.
Continuing past the gazebo is a meandering path through a variety of garden types including a nature trail over to the restaurant, the rose garden, and the Japanese Garden which have their own separate parking lot and easy access with a connecting road from the main garden.
The Rose Garden is a very strong competitor to the Whetstone Park of Roses as the best rose garden we have found. As I recall a lot of these older sections of the garden were constructed in the 1930s as depression era CCC projects and like most of those endures well.
The shaded walkways leading to the stone gazebo are also legacies of the CCC. This construction is specifically designed to provided a breezy shaded walk in the Fort Worth heat while just outside the shade the roses can grow in the full sun. I can really appreciate this enduring elegance.
I don't remember precisely where the sculpture of the girl is located but by careful positioning it looks like she is holding up the branch which is not really close to her. The waterfall feature is adjacent to the formal rose garden structure in the Perennial Garden with this butterfly bench our friend Ruth would love.
On the other side of the drive from the formal rose garden and across the parking lot from the Japanese Garden is another garden in a semi formal design. Below the center sculpture is a plaque with the quote We didn't inherit the land from our forefathers; we are borrowing it from our children
attributed to Chief Joseph Nez Perce one of the great Native American statesmen.
Finally out behind that is what they refer to as the Trial Garden containing a wonderful variety of Lori's favorite the iris as well as some other plantings. While the Japanese Garden is right next door I'll close off these rather lengthy ramblings until another visit another year and put that garden separate,