In Beautiful Brugge

This is going to be a bit of a retro post, rewinding back to the 5th of May when we spent a long weekend in the beautiful medieval city of Brugge.

It is one of those cities that is achingly beautiful and truly lives up to its hype of being breathtaking to behold.

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National Botanic Garden of Belgium - Part II

Following on from the tour of the Plant Palace in Belgium's National Botanic Garden, here we explore the rest of the gardens. As I mentioned previously the weather had already turned much cooler in Belgium than at home, so the gardens were further into Autumn. Nethertheless we had a very pleasant walk round in the (cool) sunshine.

The garden moved to its current home in the grounds of Bouchout Castle in 1938. The castle is still very much at the centre of the garden, and still surrounded on several sides by water. 

The castle dates back to the middle ages and has had substantial redevelopment over the years. I believe it's possible to stay in the Castle, although I don't know whether you have full freedom to explore the gardens out of hours if you were to book it for a holiday.

This photo doesn't give the scale of this tree justice, we were walking up one of the pathways and were both drawn to this. Many of the trees in the parkland pre-date the botanical garden. 

A smaller glass house was filled with Agaves

And they claim to have over a hundred types and species in their collection

Wandering round the parkland and as you can see Autumn was very much in full swing. I think the yellow carpet here was from a Ginkgo biloba.

  

This Cypress was in full Autumn mode. I am always fascinated by the strange roots that these grow near to water.

Many of us have to protect plants in winter, but how many have to go to such lengths as these? The plant being protected in the second picture below is easy to work out as it still has leaves poking out of the top (Musa basjoo). However what do you think is being protected by the metal sheeting?

Hopefully we will get the opportunity to visit again during a summer month sometime in the future.

Gaz

National Botanic Garden of Belgium

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National Botanic Garden of Belgium - A tour of the Plant Palace

Mark and I have had a well deserved short break in the Belgian capital Brussels. Although we did all the typical tourist activities (Atomium, Grand Place, various museums, waffles and chocolate! to name a few), we also decided to pay a visit to the Botanical Gardens. 

The first Botanical Garden in Brussels was situated in what is now part of the financial district and closed its doors in 1938 (the glasshouses eventually becoming concert venues). The important plants and botanical collections were moved to the present location in Meise, in the grounds of Bouchout Castle, just to the north of Brussels. Meise is about 4km from Atomium and the Heysel underground train stop, so it was just a short taxi ride (which almost ended up with us going back to the old botanic garden site) to the garden.

With the continental weather a little colder than at home, autumn was much further on than in our garden, however there was still plenty to see.

First off and we headed to the large glass house, grandly named the Plant Palace, which is a series of 13 interconnected glasshouses. The palace is currently undergoing some restoration so the main entrance was closed and we had to walk round to the back.

On entering, the first section was a Mediterranean themed area. Many of the plants in this glasshouse were in pots awaiting this section's turn for building work to create the new beds. The pots were so tightly placed together they didn't detract from the overall look.

Sonchus canariensis

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