Day Three!
We decided to walk to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens
The greenway walk on the way there was pretty nice with lots of people out and about. Also, seen... a dog restaurant with a hilarious promotional photo I did not photograph. There was a huge open air market getting set up and what looked like an epic bouncy house festival with a million huge bouncy houses.
The Botanical gardens were setting up their Alice in Wonderland exhibits. Some are there all the time and some are new for this event.
It is always inspiring to see gardens in places you are not familiar with. I loved all the sculptures. the first one was this pair of wire birds sitting in really pretty swathes of green grasses. I just love how the color blocking draws the eye to the birds and the water feature.
I don’t think we managed to see all the Alice in Wonderland themed sculptures. This Earth Goddess woman is part of their permanent exhibits.
Some of the more specific Alice ones were the Cheshire Cat, Alice falling down the well, the queen playing crochet, and the shaggy dog (also in the permanent collection) made out of Carex testacea.
Oh man, there’s just a lot! There was a little conifer collection. I love confers ever since touring the conifer garden of the President of the American Conifer Society in maybe 2016-ish(?). A few pictured here in hypertufa pots making me want to try making hypertufa pots again…
We headed in to the Conservatory next.
They had a really great cloud garden. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many times I have attempted to insert one of these into a clients garden. LOL. At this point I should just try putting one in my own tiny backyard landscape.one can buy round pruned plants from many nurseries. Cloud pruning - or Niwake style pruning - is just pruning hedges into cloud-like shapes. I feel like I want to make joke about all the CA native plants I see horribly box pruned around here. A video about cloud pruning in case you are wondering how this is different from box pruning.
Anyway, check out these balls.
More plant pics incoming. I almost didn’t go into the orchid garden for some reason. I am glad we did.
There were many nicely designed containers all over the gardens. I love this cobalt blue and peach color combo! I really want to spend more time designing containers. I have a couple in my yard that are in sore need of replanting.
We were so hot and exhausted at this point. We ate at the fancy restaurant there and then on the way home we rented those Lime scooter thingies. My first time doing such a thing and I was terrified. But it ended up pretty easy to pick up how to do it and we made it home. I will say those, money-wise, it was way more expensive than just getting an uber or a ride share.
Then, we were off to the beer garden party for our friends’ wedding. I kinda wish I had a pic of my dress because it is my new favorite. I wore it with sneakers because my feet were tired from walking all over the garden!