Montreal Botanical Garden
When we arrived in Montreal on June 25, 2018, we found out about the Montreal Botanical Gardens. We hadn’t been aware of this until we got into town, but this is possibly the most extensive botanical garden in North America. It was only about 20 minutes to get there from our hotel using the subway system, so of course we had to go.
The entrance is a park all by itself, with fountains and artificial streams.
It is right next to the “Tower of Montreal”, which is the support for the retractable roof of the main stadium built for the 1976 Summer Olympics. There is a ride to the top, but neither of the girls wanted to go up for some reason . . .
The indoor portion of the botanical gardens is divided into particular ecological environments. The rainforest wing is extremely extensive.
They try to grow the plants in as close of an approximation of the way they would grow in the wild as possible, and visitors can walk right up to everything.
Bromeliad blossoms:
Banana blossom and ripening fruit:
Jackfruit:
A tiny rice paddy:
An orchid that I unfortunately didn’t get a photo of the ID card:
View through the waterfall:
The arid/desert wing is also substantial, with all sorts of cacti:
An annex to the arid wing is the “Garden of Weedlessness”, a japanese garden with many bonsai.
Golden larch and chinese elm:
Ginkgo, or maidenhair tree:
Pool area:
Nepal firethorn:
Philippine tea:
And then it was back into the desert, with an assortment of small desert plants.
Elephant foot tree, with Sam for scale:
An agave plant, surrounded by its natural environment:
This was just a minor sampling of what was indoors, I shot a few hundred pictures that I don’t really have room for here. And then, outside, there was the rest of the 190 acres that the gardens cover. The outdoor plants are obviously less exotic, due to having to survive the harsh Canadian winters. They did have quite a number of roses, though. I think we were too early for prime rose season, but those that were ready were blooming well.
Aaaaannnnnnnd then, there was a squirrel.
At this point, we reached the associated Insectarium, which we obviously had to visit. So, next week: The Insectarium!
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The arid part looks like our yard. 😉
The rice was the most interesting to me. A confirmed city slicker, I always wish farm country had billboards above the crops with children’s picture book images of what was growing. It all looks the same to me.
As for botanical gardens in general, I like them because they allow me to punt on the more difficult plants like orchids. We have a few, but if I want to see the done right, I can just go to the botanical garden. Yay!