Springtime at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Without a doubt, my favorite place inside the city of St. Louis is the Botanical Gardens. They are celebrating their 150th anniversary of existence this year, and they have huge beautiful trees, a fabulous Japanese garden, and just tons of space and plants. We finally made it back there on Easter Sunday, and although it was a blustery day, we still had a wonderful time. Of course my camera was in tow, and it was really hard to sort through all the pictures to find the "best" ones....there was so much there to take pictures of!

Here's some Virginia Bluebells

There were thousands and thousands of tulips...nothing beats tulips for a dramatic floral display!
Red ones...
Pink and yellow ones....

more pink ones....

multicolored ones!

Kwanzaan cherry tree blossoms

Looking across the pond at the japanese garden

Pink dogwoods...we will be planting lots of these at the newly titled Mark's Park (formerly known as "the farm").

A japanese maple in bloom

Mark's favorite activity is feeding the koi, who always oblige with a brilliant display, some of these guys are huge!

A really pretty variety of japanese maple. Unfortunately, it wasn't labeled, so we don't know which specific type it is.

Inside their educational center they have a glass encased honeybee hive...very cool!