The Naples Botanical Garden

As I've warned on previous posts when it's a subject maybe only fascinating to me, this post is all about gardens. I finally visited the Naples Botanical Gardens which was long overdue. It's 170 acres, award winning multi gardens started in 2008, finished in 2014. It's quite the project and I was duly impressed. Since over 200,000 visitors come each year, I was thrilled to have planned a day that was very quiet and serene. A mob of school children and a senior citizens group were at the entrance as I left. Whoop!

There's a wonderful interactive children's garden, complete with treehouse, water play, playhouse and butterfly building. Of course I was thinking of Penny and Jules. No butterflies though- not sure the reason.

Eleven gardens plus a wetlands preserve with a birding tower. It took a few hours to get through everything. There were endless plants and flowers that were new to me, especially in the Caribbean and Brazilian gardens.

Love the water gardens with lilies. Amazing flowers.

The preserve area is beautifully unspoiled and it was very hard to believe this was so close to downtown Naples. The closest I got to an alligator was this sign. The signs were all over just not the real thing.

Everywhere I turned it put you in the middle of another world.

Asian gardens were a mixture of many different countries. They were missing koi which I thought was interesting. Maybe it gets too hot in the summer.

bromeliads

Espaliered Guava trees

Wildflower garden, in between seasons

There were veggies planted all over in between the various garden boundaries which was nice to see. There was a traditional rose garden but I have to say that was a bit disappointing. Again, may be the climate here.

You're thinking a lot of orchid photos, right? Well, they have a thousand varieties, so this is but a fraction. And I love them...all. No ghost orchid, although they bloom in the summer so it's possible. Probably not unless they wanted to have a guard there - endangered and rare.

I wanted to be the one sitting there, but I had a mission to see it all. There are beautiful shaded spots with benches all over the gardens. Even so, no plans to visit during the summer - the Florida heat ya know. This day was perfect sunny and 70.