Places - # 11 – San Diego Botanical Gardens

In the last post, I described a miserable experience at the Milwaukee County Zoo. But this blog is not about miserable experiences…unless they’re the kind that we can look back on years later and laugh…sort of…maybe.

We shift from zoos to botanical gardens…where one can take beautiful images with very cooperative subjects. Plants, especially flowering ones are terrific objects to capture. They are stationary (unless there is too much wind). They are cooperative and (as I have noted when I discussed great buildings) they don’t need signed releases or makeup and wardrobe changes. The only one who has to stop for phone calls or potty breaks is me.

San Diego Botanic Gardens (24 May 2010)

Last month, we visited the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. As we strolled through the beautiful property (which will be featured soon), I recalled a wonderful morning spent at the San Diego Botanic Garden. It was called the Quail Botanical Gardens in 2010. I dropped Beck at her work appointment and was free to cruise a little piece of Paradise with the camera.

Ferns and Bamboo, San Diego Botanic Gardens (24 May 2010)

The perfect, Southern California climate supports 

plants from every continent…and they don’t have to 

keep them inside under glass roofs. Give them the 

soil and water they need and they flourish outside 

with the birds and insects and visitors.

On this day, I arrived just as the park opened, meaning I was essentially alone among wonderful displays of vegetation from all over the world. Even better, I also had my iPod to add music that further enhanced this multi-sensual experience.

Barrel Cactus and Grass, San Diego Botanic Garden (24 May 2010)

Plants offer such a variety of shapes and patterns. 

Sometimes, rather than fill the frame with an entire plant, 

I like to mix portions of more than one kind of 

vegetation to show different lines and textures.

The following is the god’s-honest truth even if it seems contrived for its supreme irony. Just as I realized I was in the middle of a perfect, pristine, personal moment, I actually flashed back 38 years to that awful, aborted photo day at the Milwaukee Zoo. There were a few similarities at play and I was happy to know THIS day, as belated as it was, was going to be better.

At THAT VERY MOMENT, at the peak of realizing my righteous reward, they came. No sooner had that happy appreciation of being one with nature crossed my mind when the gods said, “Not so fast, my friend.” There, streaming toward the parking lot, was a convoy of yellow buses. I was about to pay for my sins again.

San Diego Botanic Gardens (24 May 2010)

Yes, you can still find animals in a botanical garden. 

And yes, they can often be less cooperative and move or

fly away just when you are close enough to snap them. 

This time, I was lucky.

Topiary, San Diego Botanic Gardens (24 May 2010)

I always thought that topiary was about trimming and

training plants into exotic, ornamental shapes. In the 

Mexican Garden, there are mariachi musicians and dancers.

Like great chia figures, they are also topiary, but start with 

forms that are covered with living plants and flowers.

But wait! Here’s the best part about photographing plants. They can’t run away from the screaming hordes. I cranked up the volume on the tunes, stayed one exhibit ahead of the little barbarians and continued to take pictures. It was still a fine day.