Garden Party

I finally went to the Duke Farms indoor garden display. It's closing indefinitely at the end of May for renovations. I had never been before and it was great. Some many amazing and beautiful flowers...nevermind the various smells. Everyone should get a lemon tree since their flowers smell awesome. Each display is from a different country or theme. You have French, Edwardian, Italian, tropical, Indo-Persian, Chinese, Japanese, desert, etc. I'd have to say my favorite was Edwardian but that was based solely on all the amazing orchids. I must have taken like 25 pics alone in that room.
I could seriously have a post for each room since each photo has a story to tell. Here's the French garden. For some reason, it reminds me of the stuff at Neverland. You know those low lying flowers in various shapes.
This is the English garden. There was a secret visitor to the Knot Garden, which was shrubs shaped into a knot...think Celtic knots. Can you spot the squatter?
Here's the Chinese garden complete with koi and a bull frog squatter.

They had a giant sequioa (at least that's what I think it was...either that or a redwood) bonzai. Poor thing!

Here's the Indo-Persian garden complete with citrus and papaya trees. Watch out for the water hazard in the middle of the sidewalk.

Duke Farms

Some more astute readers should be able to catch on that I've been to duke farms before for work. We did a lot of work there last year and I finally took their tours to learn more about the estate. I had some idea of what the tours would be like. We would be travelling via bus and I thought there would be stops and we'd get out for some photo ops. Well good news first. The early spring flowers and flowering trees were in full glory.

The bad news is that there were no bus stops to get out. We were allowed once to go to the open bus door to take a pic of this remote controlled waterfall. This below pic is through the glass at my seat.

This is the same view from the open bus door. Notice anything weird about the below pic? I ALWAYS see waterfalls that fall right into a lawn. So yes, it's a closer shot. But it's a horrible vantage. Plus only three people got up to take a pic.

We did take another tour which we were allowed to walk around a small portion of the estate and surrounding woods. Here's a burned down hay barn now used as a sculpture garden. I'm sure its amazing when the vines are blooming.

Duke seems to be at the forefront of green thought....at least for NJ standards. They are planning a whole bunch of renovations and upgrades to the property. The new revamped tour will have stops on the bus tour where you can get off and hang out. They have special meadow parking areas that look like hayfields but can hold cars without having the cars be stuck in the mud under normal circumstances. So I'm really looking forward to these new changes and the green building design.

There were a bunch of daffodil types that I had never seen. These had a peach colored interior.