Japanese Garden in Early Spring

The Japanese Garden at Chicago Botanic Garden is on its own island, and in early spring it's full of flowering azaleas and rhododendrons.

Absolutely gorgeous setting!

A sight to behold.......beautiful!

Oh, Nancy! That is absolutely gorgeous. Can you share the full photo? Would love to see it...

Great banner Nancy!

Thank you! Recently I started saving a copy of the banners away from the original photo and keeping the original photo number. There were a couple of banners I wanted to check something and just gave up finding the right photo. After feeling like I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with another image from a bit different angle, I finally found the right one!

This is the one that was slightly off and I just couldn't match it up:


I must have walked all over the island, and on the way off again, stopped at a bit different angle to take almost the same shot, but without the flat sky from the earlier one. They both were taken across the lagoon from the island:


Edit to add the date of the photos was March 25, 2012, with my little Sony WX-9 that I actually loved because of the size.

Glorious. It's like a dream.

Outstandingly beautiful.

I would love to stroll through this garden.

Fantastic job capturing the spirit of the place.

Just awesome banner Nancy

There's something so special about Japanese Gardens…

Full heartedly! To me they are always serene and green, and almost always have a special body of water, which to me, makes plants come alive even more.

Lovely banner and photo! I'll have to start keeping track of gardens to visit someday.

I happened to be at Chicago Botanic Garden yesterday and thought it would be interesting to see how that spot looks now, 10 years later. I cropped it pretty much to get the same area. Sadly one of my favorite parts of that scene, the willow tree, apparently died. Hopefully the azaleas or rhododendrons are just earlier blooming that I missed and are still there, it's almost 2 months after the 1st photo. But it looks rather sad now in comparison. I know the polar vortex we had in 2019 killed a lot of plants there, rows of hedges had to be removed and entire areas redone.

But here it is, 10 years later: