Another big fat show-off garden

I’m not quite as enamored with the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens as I was last year; the annuals I bought from them this year were a bit inconsistent, and the canna were not the same cultivar (as I had been told) so they clashed. A bit. Not a biggie.

Nonetheless, I always enjoy visiting the Gardens as the season is waning, because they always manage a rather magnificent display in their perennial gardens and front annual beds. I am hoping to try my luck next summer with the fabulous castor bean, shown here:



And the BG always reaffirms my faith in verbena boniarensis, a sure-fire butterfly magnet.



The Gardens—Lord and Burnham, 1901, part of Olmsted’s plan for South Park—are undergoing some kind of never-ending renovation. There is a grand master plan that, I believe, will span the globe, displaying examples of botanical environments at various checkpoints along the way. So far, the Palm Dome and one side dome have been completely rebuilt and the third is almost done. It is taking a very long time, but there are always wonderful plants to visit, no matter what construction may be happening.

They even have finally got this thing going—kind of a huge (30-feet, I’m guessing) tiki waterfall:



It had been dormant for years; apparently the plumbing is very complex.