Monday, March 04, 2013

Gardens, gardens everywhere

Anybody who knows anything at all about me knows that I like flowers. And in Puerto de La Cruz there are at least two big gardens. So I went to both this time :)

One is "Jardín Sitio Litre", which is confusingly marked as "Orchid garden" in the little tourist map, private property attached to a largish house where the current owners live. The current name is the result of somewhat japanese-sounding transformation of the original "el Sitio Little", "Little's Place", after Archibald Little, the first owner of the estate. It's not big, well established, nicely laid out, with some space dedicated, yes, to orchids, a koi carp pond, fountain, small cafe etc.

Another one is the "real" botanical garden, know as Jardín de Aclimatación de la Orotava, Jardín Botánico or El Botánico. It's larger, but still nowhere as large as Cambridge botanical garden for instance, let alone Kew. Acclimatization bit in the name is there because it was used to acclimatize plants brought from different parts of the world.

Well. I liked the second one more. It's bigger, collection is more impressive, the entrance is just 2 euro for Canarian resident (dat's me) against 4.75 for the Orchid Garden. Plus, to be honest, I was lured to the Orchid garden by the name, hoping to see a lot of beautiful, well, orchids. I don't know if it is the season or what, but you will see more orchids in Scotsdales garden center. Maybe the garden holds more variety - I don't remember seeing Lady slipper orchids in Scotsdales, for instance. Maybe. Still, I was somewhat disappointed

Now, I wrote this sorry excuse for a text just to be able to post some flower pictures. So here they are :)









orchid pics at shutterstock

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