A Personal Amateur Photography Blog
Dating from the late 1800s, the Carlos Thays Botanicall Garden is a beautiful setting for the plants, trees, sculptures and buildings that make up the 17 acre urban oasis. It is located just off the Plaza italia.
As noted in the previous posting the Montreal Botanical Gardens has a number of specialty gardens that are extraordinary. The Chinese Gardens is the best.
As a bonus the Japanese Gardens are right next door!
The Montreal Botanical Gardens is one of the finest, if not the finest, botanical gardens in North America. It has a large number of specialty gardens, such as a Chinese Gardens (covered in a separate posting), as well as numerous thematic gardens – including one dedicated to poisonous plants!
Overall the gardens are amazingly beautiful, and well kept.
In the world of blown glass nobody is better than Dale Chihuly. For more than 50 years he has turned out the most impressive glass pieces around.
The Franklin Park Botanical Gardens has always had a number of Chihuly pieces, but for the next few months they have expanded their collection to be the largest Chihuly collection in a botanical garden anywhere. Entitled Chihuly: Celebrating Nature, it blends nicely with the gardens.
A morning at the botanical gardens to check out the Chihuly Exhibit (in a different posting) allowed us to see the gardens in full bloom, along with active butterflies.
In West Texas the story goes there are 3 types of people: Those who know Judge Roy Bean from a 1970s movie, those who know Judge Roy Bean from their Texas schoolbooks, and those who are ignorant to the most important person in the history of West Texas. I come from the first group.
Roy Bean was born in Kentucky in 1825, and lived an adventuresome life that eventually lead him to a small Texas town which he renamed after his favorite actress, Lily Langtry – and became the Justice of the Peace for the ‘Law West of the Pecos’
Today there isn’t much in Langtry except a visitor center with a fantastic cactus garden, as well as the original buildings the Judge built in the 1800s.
The cactus garden is very cool with numerous different types of cacti.
The Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center & Museum, and Cactus Garden was a very unexpectedly nice stop in the desolation of West Texas.
Just south of downtown Houston is Hermann Park, and the McGovern Centennial Gardens. It is a small, well thought out space with flowers, plants and statues.
The statues featured great Latin American leaders, as well as (strangely) Scottish poet Robert Burns!
