Flowers, flowers, flowers..........

Visited the US botanical gardens in D.C. today.  Wow!  I have been there before, but it was fall/winter and the outdoor gardens were not in bloom like today.  The weather was perfect.  We took advantage of this and some free all day parking by the Capital Building.  I have included the link below.  Check it out.

http://www.usbg.gov


The outdoor portion of the garden was very interesting.  Starts with a butterfly garden.  The flowers were pretty, but no butterflies, unfortunately.

There is a "mailbox" at every new portion of the garden with general information such as this one for the butterfly garden.

Then on to the First Ladies Water Garden.  It was so pretty, and hard to resist taking off your shoes to dip your toes in the cool water.  But, this is forbidden.

The flowers and the grounds were so well maintained.  Looked very natural.  We found out that the gardeners and grounds keepers work from 6-10 AM every day (when the museum is closed) and then drive out to the "production center" which is basically 34 greenhouses spread out on 2 acres to maintain and work the new additions, back ups, etc.  They allow visitors to the "production center" only once/year and my husband and I were lucky to get in this year (August 19, 2015).  Really looking forward to that.

Well enough for now.  Will update again tomorrow with the regional habitat gardens that are directly behind the First Ladies Water Garden.