A Visit to the Botanical Gardens

 
Today was forecast to be sunny, no clouds and warm, a perfect day to spend outside. Of course, most of Amsterdam felt the same way but it wasn’t so crowded.

After a leisurely breakfast we walked over to the botanical gardens, stopping to shoot photos on one bridge over a canal. The sun was so bright with people walking and biking every which way.

The view from the top of a bridge. The opera house is to the right

The gardens are not on a large area but very efficiently planted. There are areas of evolution, and then categories of plants. The whole thing was started in 1638.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortus_Botanicus_(Amsterdam)

If you know us well, you know that we can’t grow much of any kind of plant, even when we try. And what we know about plants we could write in 1 word, nothing. So, starting with this it was going to make for an interesting time.

But actually, the gardens are very nice, and they make for a lazy afternoon. There are little paths that go around so that you don’t get tired of seeing plants. There, to our surprise was a redwood tree from California. It is quite tall and we felt like we should warn them about tall redwood trees in the wind.

We did locate the oldest plant which is a male plant about 300-years-old, while the female is years younger, 200-years-old. This is like what I tell people about Dale and I, he is years older than I am! Anyway, I’m attaching photos and a photo of the description.

The oldest plant. The male is in front of Dale and the female is to the left

Coffee plants were brought here but we couldn’t find them. I’d like to see a coffee plant though.

A pretty walk

I must confess that we sat on a bench where Dale fell asleep and I read the newspaper online. But another guy was sitting reading a book when we got there and was still reading when we sat down.