Romantic, imaginative, and exciting

   Well, that is what the brochure for Chanticleer said it is, a garden in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne.  I cannot attest to all three adjectives, but it certainly is beautiful.  I visited there on May 1st, when the spring flowers were at their peak.
     Chanticleer was established by the Rosengarten family in the 1920s, and it encompasses 47 acres.  One can easily spend hours there, as there are so many separate gardens to visit. 

Back in the USA

     OK, enough travel abroad for a while, so now I am off to see some famous US gardens.  This is  Longwood Gardens, about 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia. It was first developed by the Peirce family in the late 1700s.  In 1906 Pierre du Pont bought the property and began extensive garden projects.  The huge conservancy is the finest I have ever seen, with many rooms of beautiful displays.

Simply stunning

     In a couple of locations in South Africa, I came across these amazing red plants.  There are 22  species of them native there, and they are in the genus Haemanthus and in the family Amaryllidaceae.  All the species are not red as these two are. Two common names are paintbrush and blood lily, though I do not know if they refer to these two species shown here.  You can see the difference in the stems.  The one in the burned area I was told pops up after a fire, which certainly seems to be the case.  I saw it in a remote mountain area.  The plants are bulbous perennials, and they do not tolerate freezing.

More beauty from Kirstenbosch

     Here are more photos from Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa.  The first two were taken on a boardwalk about 40 feet above the ground, allowing good views of the whole garden.
     The other photos are of two unusual and beautiful flowers of the southern hemisphere.  The Protea is the national flower of South Africa.

Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden

     Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden is the jewel of gardens in the country of South Africa.  It is 1300 acres in size, and it was established in 1913.  It is one of 11 botanical gardens in South Africa administered by the South African National Biodiversity Institute.  I recently visited three of these.
     I will have two posts dedicated to Kirstenbosch.  The garden is in Cape Town, situated at the base of famous Table Mountain, visible in the second and third photos.  The garden has the largest display of the genus Plectranthus I have ever seen.  The photo after their description shows a mass planting of them in flower.  They flower in late summer to early fall, which it was when I visited.  It is one of my favorite plants, and I have over 40 containers of Plectranthus coleoides.  I overwinter them in my house.