visit to the US
Lee Poulsen (Tue, 21 Oct 2003 10:59:46 PDT)

If you end up in Southern California and go to the Huntington, don't
forget the Los Angeles County Botanical Gardens and Arboretum as well
as the Descanso Gardens, all within a couple of miles of each other.
And then there are all the nurseries in northern San Diego county,
probably the best place to grow plants of all kinds in the entire
United States. I could spend a week just going to nurseries in
northern S.D. county and probably still not be able to go to all of
them. (Really!)

And if we have an El Niño winter (with lots of rain) then the deserts
can be spectacular in the spring. I've been to Joshua Tree National
Park in an El Niño year as well as Death Valley National Park after
an El Niño winter and there were an unbelievable number of
wildflowers covering virtually every square inch of sand.

I would also recommend the central Texas area in the spring when the
countryside (and every vacant lot it seems) literally explodes with
color. Even the medians and sides of the freeways become covered in
flowers of all kinds. It's unbelievable, and no one quite believes
someone who tells them about it until they see it for themselves. Of
all the wildflower displays I've seen all over the U.S., I think it
is by far the best. I don't know how it compares to the Cape
provinces in South Africa in a good rain year or Chile after an El
Niño winter, both of which I'd love to see.

Here's a website with links to a bunch of arboreta and botanical
gardens in various regions across the U.S.
<http://www.crescentbloom.com/II/E/default.htm>.

--
--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10