“Day lilies” by Virtual Farm Boy. See the album here.

Last Friday and Saturday I made a quick trip (about 30 hours) to St. Louis to attend a performance of Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. I arrived mid-morning on Friday, so I had time to play tourist for much of the day. By accident on Thursday I discovered that the St. Louis Zoo (my first choice of tourist destination) was closed for the whole day, so on a whim I decided to go to the Missouri Botanical Garden, which was marked as a “gem” in the AAA tour book. It was well worth the trip.

The grounds are enormous and everywhere there are gardens of every description imaginable. For example, they have the largest Japanese Gardens (complete with lake and islands) in the US; there is a Chinese garden; an English boxwood garden; a whole center devoted to home gardening; an herb garden; a hedge maze; three rose gardens; a garden devoted to day lilies. Everywhere you look there is a different vista with beautifully maintained plantings. It is a feast for the eye. I hadn’t expected much, and I was very pleasantly surprised. It is clear that there is a great deal of community support for the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

I spent almost three hours exploring the grounds, and did not see it all. I had lunch in their lovely restaurant (a little pricey, but the food was decent) and shopped in their large gift shop book store.

[tags]St. Louis, Missouri, garden, botanical, flowers[/tags]