Botanika

While swimming this evening at Deep Eddy, I got to thinking about lists and how woman I once worked with liked the idea of compiling a list of rock concerts she been to; enumerating the rock artists she’d seen in her life.

I was thinking about the botanicals gardens I had been to. So here is my list starting from earliest childhood.

Fort Worth Botanical Garden
City where I was born. I have pictures of my mom in wasp-waisted shirtdresses trying to keep three children from climbing into the lily ponds. About the only thing I can remember is cattails; then and now they seem more like an alien life form than a plant.

Wellington, New Zealand
1958; eight years old, visiting my mother’s homeland. Annuals ablaze. Again my mom dragging us three around the formal beds; we stumbled into the wedding of my brother’s schoolteacher.

Vancouver
1959. On the way back from NZ, our ship stopped here. Formal beds, annuals.

St. Louis, Mo
Freshman at Washington U, 1967. Giant glass greenhouse with specimen exotics.

Austin, TX
Zilker Gardens 1968
It’s odd that Austin had a botanical garden before San Antonio. How we managed to luck into this I don’t know. And such a wonderful combo of Japanese paradise, the rose gardens, natural plantings, and now the Jurassic Park garden.

San Antonio, Tx
1989. Finally San Antonio gets their act together. Awesome wisteria arbor.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2003. Visiting daughter. They have what’s supposed to be the most extensive orchid collection but what I loved was the palm garden—dozens of different varieties and an allee of giant Washington-type palms. WOW.

Chihuahuan Desert Research Center
2005. This is a wonderful botanical garden with agave, cactus and other desert plants outside of Fort Davis. Not lush but no less beautiful.