Missouri Botanical Garden

Summer weather here in the St.Louis area has not been to good.  It has either been very hot (like 90 to 100 degrees with high humidity) or very wet with literally torrents of rain.  And yet somehow we manage.  The past two days we have been in Carbondale supervising the move of our daughter's household items to Florida by hired movers.  On Monday John and I put up a tarp over the car so we could organize and pack some of the items to be moved.  It rained on and off that day.  On Tuesday we had the sun beating down on us, and the temperature was 100 degrees.  We felt very sorry for the movers who were sweating profusely as they moved numerous items into a van.

Rain was in the forecast when John and I, as well as my sister Julia and husband Cal headed out the door last Saturday for the gardens.   I am thankful that forecast did not deter us because, as you can see from the picture above, they are gorgeous at this time of the year.  It seemed that as we walked through the gardens we came upon one beautiful sight after another.

Pictured above is the central pool which can be found in front of the climatron.  Dale Chilluly's Walla Walla Onions float on the water there amidst the water lilies which are presently in bloom.  Equally beautiful are the lotus flowers, which we discovered in the Japanese section of the garden.

 There were many of them blooming in the pond of the Japaneses garden, many of them at the end of their blooming period.  Probably the best time to see them is in the middle of June.

In the many times that I have visited the gardens I do not ever remember seeing the pincushion gardens.  The beautiful circular beds were first introduced in the 1850s in Herfordshire, England.  The idea was to "stick" them in the garden like pins in a pincushions.  Missouri Botanical Gardens added them in the early 1900s.  The designs we see here today are the ones popular in Henry Shaw's time.  He was the founder of the gardens, for the information of those of you not from St.Louis.

The Ottoman Gardens are the first of its kind in the United States.   It is modeled after the Turkish "Gardens of Paradise" of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Here fragrant flowers and herbs surround a shallow pool of water called a havoz.  Istanbul and St. Louis are about the same latitude so many of the plants here are common to the St.Louis area.  In the foreground is a blooming rose of Sharon.

Pictured above is one beautiful hanging basket of begonias and fan flowers.  As we were walking into the home garden section it started to sprinkle.  We tried to ignore the weather,  but the rain did not stop at little droplets.  I must say, however, that we were quite satisfied with what we did manage to see of the gardens.
I am now writing this posting as the rain is coming down outside in torrents.  We are planning to leave St.Louis tomorrow, come rain or sunshine!