My World Tuesday = Norfolk Botanical Gardens in Norfolk, VA

My World Tuesday = Norfolk Botanical Gardens in Norfolk,VA

Jack and I toured these gardens on Thursday of last week after the NARFE conference had ended.

There are fountains at the entrance to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens and this one features a mermaid since the mermaid is the symbol of Norfolk.

This big gorgeous bouquet of flowers from the various gardens greeted us in the visitor's center.

We were also greeted in the visitor's center by eight week old bald eagles on a live cam. I made a quick and dirty movie that I will share with all of you tomorrow.

This is the first garden on the garden trail. It is the sensory garden.

This is the backdrop wall to the entrance to the visitor's center.
Guess what is blooming in yellow here?

Collard greens!

Look at these big beautiful azalea blooms in the azalea garden.

There are acres and acres of old growth native Virginia trees underplanted with hydrangeas, azaleas and rhododendrons. In this photo are six foot tall magenta rhododendrons.

There are 24 tall marble sculptures in the sculpture garden.

This sculpture depicts a colonial Virginian.

The sculpture garden has a wide alley down the center and eventually leads to the wedding pavilion. Many years ago Jack, the girls and I saw a beautiful wedding ceremony taking place in the gardens

The expansive rose garden has over 250 varieties of roses including old French and new English David Austen roses. Above was a climbing rose on an arbor just bursting out with blooms.

This is a type of buckeye tree.

But not an Ohio buckeye tree.

They called this a horse chestnut tree.

Our train tour took us thru the wet marsh gardens.

This was a green earth garden.

Note all the sedums planted and growing on the roof.

Here is the entrance to the very large children's garden with lots of flowers and birdhouse in view.

At the entrance was a cute group of head start students.

These beautiful deep pink azaleas were at the entrance to the lake and the place where you

took the canal boat tour.

This was my favorite part of the botanical gardens.
The beautiful Japanese garden.

It reminded me of the famous Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon that we saw in 2007.

These bonsai trees were between 20 and 30 years old but less than

two feet tall.

A koi pond with Japanese shrine in stone.

Another view.

I liked these weird shaped and curving maple trees.

That's all folks.

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