Soaking in all the beauty and colors at the University of Alaska's Botanical Gardens helps one get through our long winter months. Today many artists were enjoying the beauty.
The purpose of the gardens is to conduct research on what plants can thrive in our harsh winters. Over the last several years the staff have been researching peonies to learn if they could be a viable international export crop. These beauties are blooming here right now which would make them available at times when they are not blooming in other parts of the world.
WOW those peonies are stunning! Such lovely sharp photographs too.
ReplyDeleteWOW what stunning photos! Peonies are so beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThe Peonies are wonderful! OOOooooohhhhh how beautiful!
ReplyDeleteWonderful peonies and excellent photos.
ReplyDeleteOh those photos make me want to run to the nearest garden and wallow in them! Your pics are gorgeous! THANKS FOR SHARING this with us!!!
ReplyDeleteJan, I was just looking at your photos again. In the top one with the artist painting, do we know her??
ReplyDeleteI love it! Here ya'll are, trying to see what will survive a harsh winter. Down here, in the Sandhills area of North Carolina, my husband and I conduct experiments every year to see what will survive the harsh summers!
ReplyDeleteIt gets very hot and dry here in the summertime. And nearly everything is "full sun". And, we mean FULL. The sun just bakes down.
One year, I found this gorgeous hanging basket filled with yummy purple and pink petunias. I loved it! So, I put it on a shepherd's hook in our front flower bed, to share with everyone. I smiled as I left for work that morning, knowing how pretty it would be and how fun it would be to see them when I got home.
Well, by the time I got home - 9 or so hours later - I would have sworn one of my neighbors stole my beautiful basket and switched it out for one of theirs that had been shriveled and dead for three weeks! Of couse, it was the same basket, but it was shriveled, brown, dead. In less than a day!
So, every year we congratulate the plants - flowers, shrubs, and trees - that survived the previous year, and try some new ones! It's an adventure!!!