Judy and I spent the month of March in San Antonio visiting our son Geoff and his wife Queenie, and enjoying and helping with our new granddaughter, Ophelia.  Since we’re not doing any gardening, we’ll talk about our trip to the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

The gardens occupy 38 acres of donated property located about 3 miles northeast of downtown San Antonio.  The theme of the gardens is truly Texas and San Antonio flavored, with most of the space dedicated to Texas plants, landscape, and ecology.  It is very family oriented with lots of interactive exhibits, children’s gardens and play areas.  It also boasts a large collection of specimen plants, mostly from Texas and southwest US, but also unique plants from around the world. Here are some pictures we took, which we hope captures the flavor of the garden.

Natural landscape is the dominant theme.

Containers are everywhere, either filled with specimen plants or just for decoration.

These little cottages represent different typical Texas home landscaping before lawns and suburbia became the overriding influence.

Climate controlled glass structures house both native and specimen plants, along with good looking water features.

Water features are also scattered throughout the garden

Rocky ledges dominate the children’s area.

These pictures are just a small taste of what the garden offers. We really enjoyed our visit