visit to the US

Lee Poulsen wpoulsen@pacbell.net
Tue, 21 Oct 2003 10:59:46 PDT
>Mark,
>
>I would add the Huntington Gardens, Libraries and Art Galleries near 
>Los Angeles, California.
>
>If you are in the Chicago area, be sure to visit Boyce Tankersley at 
>the Chicago Botanic Gardens.  In St. Louis, Missouri, there is the 
>incomparable Missouri Botanic Gardens.
>
>Have a great trip!
>
>Jim Shields
>in central Indiana (4 hours from Chicago Bot Gdn and about 6 or 7 
>hrs from MoBot, by auto)
>

If you end up in Southern California and go to the Huntington, don't 
forget the Los Angeles County Botanical Gardens and Arboretum as well 
as the Descanso Gardens, all within a couple of miles of each other. 
And then there are all the nurseries in northern San Diego county, 
probably the best place to grow plants of all kinds in the entire 
United States. I could spend a week just going to nurseries in 
northern S.D. county and probably still not be able to go to all of 
them. (Really!)

And if we have an El Niño winter (with lots of rain) then the deserts 
can be spectacular in the spring. I've been to Joshua Tree National 
Park in an El Niño year as well as Death Valley National Park after 
an El Niño winter and there were an unbelievable number of 
wildflowers covering virtually every square inch of sand.

I would also recommend the central Texas area in the spring when the 
countryside (and every vacant lot it seems) literally explodes with 
color. Even the medians and sides of the freeways become covered in 
flowers of all kinds. It's unbelievable, and no one quite believes 
someone who tells them about it until they see it for themselves. Of 
all the wildflower displays I've seen all over the U.S., I think it 
is by far the best. I don't know how it compares to the Cape 
provinces in South Africa in a good rain year or Chile after an El 
Niño winter, both of which I'd love to see.

Here's a website with links to a bunch of arboreta and botanical 
gardens in various regions across the U.S. 
<http://www.crescentbloom.com/II/E/default.htm>.


-- 
--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10


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