Friday, October 31, 2008

Bellevue Botanical Garden

On Tuesday, my older daughter's school class had field trip to Bellevue Botanical gardens. I volunteered to help, and took the opportunity to take some pictures of this quite lovely garden located on the East side of Seattle and Lake Washington. It was a wonderfully foggy day, a complete contrast to my trip to the Olympic Sculpture Park a day earlier.


Spreading on an area of totally 53 acres, Bellevue Botanical Garden has all the "display elements"of a traditional botanical garden; the Northwest Perennial Alliance Border, Waterwise Garden, the Japanese Yao Garden, Alpine Rock Garden and summer displays of dahlias and fuchsias. In addition to this, it has large areas of woodlands, meadows and wetlands, much of which are unlandscaped and in their natural state. Especially the tall conifers, as western red-cedar, Douglas fir and native schrubs give a hint of how the wilderness further around Seattle looks like today and how it used to look like here earlier.
As it is situated in the middle of sprawling suburban area, the Bellevue Botanical Garden give the visitors and locals a wonderful possibility for recreation. For the festive season, it will be lit with 500 000 electrical lights, a fact that the volunteering ladies happily advertised while I was there, telling that this is the most popular event during the year. Feeling like a complete bore, I am very sceptical of this kind of waste of energy - looking like a floral Las Vegas does not quite satisfy my garden design appetite... Despite this, the gardens are well worth a visit while in Seattle.


10 comments:

Fundera grönt said...

Fina bilder!

The Intercontinental Gardener said...

Hej, visst är det det - det är roligt att få en ordentlig dimma någon gång med i bilderna, det blir så mycket mer poetiskt.

nilla|utanpunkt said...

Underbara höstglimtar – verkar vara en fantastiskt fin trädgård, och du har fångat den i all sin färgprakt.

Liisa said...

Thank you so much for visiting my blog!! The Bellevue Botanical Gardens look beautiful!! I grew up in Spokane, WA., and lived there for 21 years. My family lives in Spokane now, transplanted from Minnesota. My grandfather came to the states from Finland. We found an old letter he had written while in the states - it was asking his family back in Finland to start clearing trees, and begin building his house. We believe that this must have been prior to meeting my grandmother. My grandmother was quite a bit younger than he, and quite persistent, I might add!! : ) I really enjoyed your pictures of the Botanical Gardens - I am hoping to visit the Montreal Botanic Gardens very soon!!
Liisa

Liisa said...

hyva ilta,

Where in Finland are you from? My mother went to visit family a couple years ago. Most of my family lives around Oulu and the River ii.

Liisa

The Intercontinental Gardener said...

Hej Camellia, visst är det en fin trädgård, så nära staden. Jag borde lägga till bilder på den vilda områdena också, naturen här är så häftig.

Hi Liisa, I come from Turku (Åbo) in Finland, my family lives there. It is a beautiful part of the country, I love especially the archipelago towards Åland.
So I guessed right about your Finnish roots - it is nice that you have kept the spelling with two "i"s, even as a third generation here!

Anonymous said...

Vilka härliga bilder du tagit i den lätt dimmiga höstparken....fint!
/Janne

Glädjekällans Trädgårdsblogg said...

Vackra höstbilder, det måste inte blomma ;-)
Birgitta

nilla|utanpunkt said...

Hej, det finns en utmaning till dig på min blogg. Nej, det var inte min idé, den kom till mig utifrån också. Du är förstås fullkomligt fri att vilja om du vill anta den eller inte.
Många hälsningar,
Camellia

TYRA Hallsénius Lindhe said...

Läckert med dimman, vackert! snyggt jobbat T.I.Gardener.