Spring has sprung! Celebrate the most beautiful places to experience the season’s stunning colors.
The Rites of Spring
..
The New York Botanical Garden: The Big Apple hosts a South American tropical paradise each spring when The Orchid Show: Brazilian Modern takes over the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Running through April 12, the event (now in its seventh year) showcases thousands of lush, brilliantly hued orchids, as well as bromeliads and
other plants native to Brazil. Of course, the garden is about much more than orchids; springtime highlights include grape hyacinths, pandanuses, lilacs, irises and roses.
The Rites of Spring
..
There may be no time more joyous than the greening of the year, when cold climates awaken from their snowtime slumber and flowers go ka-bloom. Here are some of the best places to shake off the winter doldrums and smell the springtime roses.
..
The Huntington Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif.: This garden complex outside Los Angeles — part of the mammoth Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens — has been transformed over a century from a working ranch to a flower-lover’s paradise containing more than 14,000 plant varieties. Themed gardens feature roses, camellias, lily ponds, and the flowers of jungle, desert, subtropical and Australian regions. Springtime specialties include calla lilies, euphorbias, trumpet vines, bougainvilleas and birds of paradise.
The Rites of Spring
..
Chicago: Grant Park’s charter states that it will remain “forever open, clear and free.” That’s a boon for visitors because the park is a downtown gem, a green area situated between the high-octane Loop and Lake Michigan. The park fills with flowers as the city wakes up from the Midwest winter; you could entertain yourself all day soaking in the sun and the diverse plant life. While you’re in Chicago, be sure to see the Garfield Park Conservatory, which is often called “landscape art under glass.” The conservatory’s spring flower show runs through May 10, spotlighting hundreds of azaleas and hydrangeas.
The Rites of Spring
..
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco: Also home to such attractions as the de Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park features a half-dozen gardens that sparkle in the spring, including areas devoted to roses, tulips and native California plants, as well as flowers mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. You can also find a host of exotic tropical flowers in the Conservatory of Flowers, which dates from the 1870s and is one of the oldest wooden conservatories in the country.
No comments yet.