Botanic Gardens

Friday morning was another beautiful day, warm and partly cloudy, again no rain. This was just perfect for our plans to visit the Botanic Gardens. These are very extensive gardens which have been in existence for hundreds of years. It’s a good thing that a map was included with the modest price of admission.

There are so many literary connections to these gardens. It was overlooking the water garden where we found the bench used in The Golden Compass trilogy (this where Lyra and Will would sit, in their own time dimensions, to feel connected to each other). Lewis Carroll patterned the Queen’s gardens in Alice in Wonderland after the Botanic Gardens and J.R.R. Tolkien’s favorite tree was the basis for the Ents in the Lord of the Rings series. You could really see the personality when you looked at this Pinus Nigra extending its branches far above the wall.

I loved looking at the vegetable gardens. Besides making me reminiscent of my garden at home (my pretty much non-existent garden this year, did you kids ever plant the potatoes?), it reminded me so much of Beatrix Potter’s book, Peter Rabbit, with all of the upside down baskets over the lettuce to protect it from rabbits.

The rock garden with its central fountain was truly inspiring. I kept thinking about what I could do with my space if I only had lots of time, a team of trained gardeners and the climate of Britain.
My favorite area was the beds laid out according to notes from the Superintendent of the Garden back in the 1600’s. In 1648 he had published a catalogue listing the 1000+ species of plant present in the gardens. This area was planned to include many flowers from that list. Most of them were in bloom so it was a beautiful site.

The gardens were also used for research in conjunction with various Oxford Colleges so when we visited the conservatories we saw many exotic plants such as passionflower (with a really unusual blossom), bananas, varieties of orchids (unfortunately none of these were blooming), ferns of every size and description and so many other things you just have to go and see for yourself. The most astounding were the lily pads in the lily house. They were massive! Each one was probably three feet across, I’d never seen anything like it.

All in all it was an amazing experience. I thought if I lived in Oxford I would certainly have to get a season’s pass because you could go back every week and see new things. It’s probably a good thing that the Arboretum was 6 miles out of town or I might still be there.