Missouri Botanical Gardens - St. Louis, MO

The famous 630' Gateway Arch is at LaClede's landing on the Mississippi River, and it is the nation's tallest monument.

This is the courthouse where the slave Dredd Scott was tried in the 1850's. In a nutshell, he and his wife sued for freedom in 1846. Because their freedom was denied, more fuel was added to the conflict which led to the Civil War. Our hotel was right above the fountain area. It was a gorgeous view!

NOW ON TO THE BOTANICAL GARDENS
The fountain you see when you first enter the grounds to the Botanical Gardens is Chihuly's Polyvitro Crystals, made of polyurethane material, and they are large and hollow, which allows him to use a larger scale than glass.

These two whimsical things were in the Children's Garden, and I just love them! I think you might see something like this in my Crazy Dog garden before the end of the year! You can see the edge of the garden railroad, too, that Hubby would like to have somewhere at our house as well.


This little water feature in the Children's Garden was so darned cute! It was tucked away into a little hidden corner in a maze - almost like a reward for finding Mr. and Mrs. Peacock by sound.
This is the peek at some of the glass as you begin to enter to the Rose Gardens - there is a matching gate with the sun radiants on the other side of the garden, too.
Here I am at one of the gates.
Most of the Chihuly installation was inside the Climatron which is the domed building just behind the reflecting pool. The glass pieces floating in the pool are called Walla Walla Onions with pointed tips that resemble their namesake, the famous sweet onions of eastern Washington State.
Inside the Climatron are all sorts of tropical lowland rain forest plants. It's kept quite humid inside, and there are birds flitting all around as well. It was build in 1960 and it was the world's first geodesic dome greenhouse.

We took over 100 pictures, so I am only going to share a few of them. Remember, his work is copyrighted, and he gives permission to use the images for educational and noncommercial use. I didn't look at the program until we got home, and now I see that in all the cases, I was able to identify what the meaning of the glass was to represent. See if you get the same feeling from the work.


IkebanaThis series is named after the traditional art of Japanese flower arranging.

This piece was sitting across from a little stream on the bank. I took the picture, standing behind the waterfall. It parodied some of the plants on the same hillside - unknown names.

Sea Urchins
Herons
Machhia - This series is named after the Italian word for "spotted".
Mexican Hats - These were tucked into the wall by the fish area, and I almost missed them. They have little three dimensional pieces of glass stuck onto them called "jimmies".

It had gotten very uncomfortable in the Climatron after we were in there for about an hour and a half, so we ventured outside to walk the garden grounds. There was lots of shade and it was just so beautiful! It covers 79 acres with gardens, fountains, and greenhouses, so we just couldn't do it all! But we were able to spend another two hours walking around and talking about all the gorgeous flowers. We walked through the Sewa-en, one of the largest Japanese gardens in North America, the Victorian area, which also has an original country home, a garden maze and the founder's (Mr. Shaw) mausoleum, the rose garden, the children's garden, the center for home gardening, and the day lily garden. A wonderful, wonderful day!

Fields of lilies make me smile.
These were my favorites.
Henry Shaw came to St. Louis from Sheffield, England in 1819, establishing a very successful hardware importing business to equip many settlers heading west. The garden was opened to the public in 1859.

This is Mr. Shaw's Mausoleum - isn't the rose in his hand touching? It is such a lovely resting place.


Hubby says, "Thank you Mr. Shaw for a beautiful garden, and a wonderful day!"