Please Mom, Can I Get One Too?

So maybe that heading would describe my whole trip to London. Please, can I have one for my house too? Being a gardener, I had to visit several gardens and take pictures of other interesting, unusual, and lovely plants I saw. And it took great will power to not buy a pot of something in the garden shops!

The first garden I got to visit was the Chelsea Physic Garden. It's several hundred years old and was originally founded with the intent of studying plants from all over the world and how they grow and propagate. The head gardener would trade plants with men who travelled throughout the New World, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and everywhere in between to learn more about the plant world. This garden has only been open to the public in the last hundred years, and it still has an educational focus. I could see they bring in school groups, because this display was obviously geared to children, showing common things found in a grocery store. The staff had taken out the original contents and planted whatever plant was the main ingredient inside the container: sage, lavender, a lemon tree seedling, aloe, cactus, eggplant, a green bean...I thought it was an awesome idea for teaching children:

This is a monkey puzzle tree. Those spines/leaves are hard and prickly. It was probably 25 feet tall, with these curving, twisting branches. Weird!

I love bright colors in the garden. This was in the Caribbean section of the Chelsea Physic Garden. It's called Amaranthus. Maybe I can find some of this for a garden pot on my porch for next year. The coleus that I have seen in nurseries here just pales next to this!

One of my mother's responsibilities is to care for the flower boxes that hang alongside the Hyde Park Chapel building. These are her beautiful geraniums.

In Kensington Gardens, on the north side of Kensington Palace and adjacent to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground is the Elfin Tree. This tree is covered with little elves doing all kinds of things -- reading, eating, playing, kissing -- and they are carved right out of the tree. This is a close-up. I had to put my camera lens in between the wire mesh protecting the tree from vandals.

Two of my sisters are trying to get their own shots of the tree.

I took quite a few pictures in Kew Gardens, one of my all-time favorite gardens. It covers a vast amount of ground, which I have never had quite the time to explore. This trip was no exception. I loved the bark on this tree and how knobbly and layered it was.

This one should be called The Halloween Tree. I saw this as we walked through the gardens at Buckingham Palace. Dr Seuss? The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? A Lord of the Rings Ent, perhaps? Or maybe Dorothy saw this on her way to vanquish the Wicked Witch of the West.