Idaho Botanical Gardens field trip

 

Yesterday I accompanied Alan's class on a field trip to the Idaho Botanical Gardens!  We got hit with rain showers off and on so we had to hurry through the gardens but we had a good time and I still got plenty of good photos.

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The Idaho Botanical Gardens are located at the site of the old state penitentiary.  Some of the walls and guard towers are still there and make for interesting back drops.  This old stone wall borders the rose garden.

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I think this is an ornamental cherry? The tour that we took was called "Flower Power" but our guide didn't talk about this tree.  But I thought it was pretty so I took the photo.

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Our guide did talk about this tree.  It's a legume, in the pea family.  You can tell by the seed pods (on the right hand side of my photo out of focus), and the flowers have the unique legume family shape.  The flower is closed to protect the pollen until a bee lands on the lower lip, then it springs open so the bee can access the pollen as this bee is doing in my photo.

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The roses in the rose garden aren't blooming yet but it's still very pretty.  Large mounds of sweet violets are blooming at the base of rose shrubs, and that white flowering tree is a perfect back drop for the greying garden bench.  When the sun peaked out from behind the clouds the scene glowed!

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I kind of like this view through the garden arches.

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This vignette is obviously inspired by Monet, and it will become even more obvious in a month or so when the irises bloom.  The yellow flower on the right is a euphorbia. It's pollinated by bees and so it's yellow to attract the bees, however bees don't see the color red so when a euphorbia flower gets pollinated its center turns red so that the bees will ignore it and move on to a euphorbia flower that isn't pollinated. Clever, yes?

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This little froggy stole the show for kids.

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The kids planted marigolds in a new bed in front of the Children's garden that is currently being constructed.  That's Alan on the left hand side, I told him that we should come back in a month to see how his marigold is doing (not to mention that in a month the roses and irises should be blooming!).

After they planted the flowers they dissected a daffodil so they could examine its inner workings.  That was the end of our tour and right then it started raining so we had to run to the buses.  We drove to a nearby park with a covered picnic area, but by the time we got there it had stopped raining so we were able to eat outside and the kids could play before going back to school.

I hope you enjoyed my photos!