Photo tour of the US Botanical Garden

   I took around 1000 pictures over three days in Washington DC, documenting so many museums, landmarks and of course the wedding itself. Needless to say, I brought back a lot of information. I am planning on sharing photo tours of a few of the places I had the opportunity to visit. And where better to start than the US botanical gardens. My must see locations were the museum of the American Indian, the Natural History Museum, The National Gallery and the Botanical Gardens, and I saw them all!

   The botanical garden is a part of the grounds of the US capital. The swampland where it stands was designated toward a botanical garden in 1821, and after being leveled, drained, malarial mosquitos removed, and cultivated as a garden with paths and a fountain, was finally brought into its current form in about 1850 when greenhouses were added. Under the presidency of John Quincy Adams, it was publicized that the US was interested in acquiring any unknown plant which might be able to survive (and potentially provide food) on the North American continent.

  Apparently, the response was fairly positive and the greenhouses were used to propagate and 'test' the young plants before taking them out into nature. This was the beginning (at least from North America) of the botanical explorations around the world that would bring back so many of the exotic fruits and vegetables which are now common in the southern US; citrus fruits, bananas, avocados, etc...

Seeing that cocoa beans actually, grow on the trunk of the tree rather than the branches surprised me

 Many of the core of the current garden is the direct result of the specimen brought back from the Wilks expidition of the southern Pacific and Antarctica. Madagascar is also well represented.

   The current gardens contain over ten thousand plants. the oldest being about 165 years old. Obviously the conservatory I visited no longer works as a functional greenhouse. there are external greenhouses where the seedlings are started and young plants maintained.

   The rooms in the green house are organized in the classical way, according to climate; rainforest, dessert, etc... one room is dedicated to Hawaii alone.

Here are a few of the many lovely plants I saw:

 There are lovely gardens outside of the conservatory which we did not spend much time in as March isn't really the best time to see the majority of outdoor plants. As Washington DC is well known for their many cherry trees, I did, however, snap a picture of the capital building through the bloom-laden branches.

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