Münster University Botanicle garden.

Just a thought I agree with: ‘ We are precious because of the value of the sacrifice made by Jesus. So don’t put a low estimate on yourself.’

What is said about this garden:

‘ Botanical Garden of University of Münster is a 4.6 hectare oasis of tranquility directly behind Münster Castle. Founded in 1803, it features around 8,000 plant species across 23 themed areas and is entirely free to enter.’

What I first noticed was that large areas are committed to wild grasses and flowers with a few patches beaten down by the storm. The freshness of the air and the beauty of these areas has been enhanced by the coolness after the heat.

This area near an artificial stream had meadow type planting with wild flowers and seeding grass. The daisies were in mass amongst the grasses in a drier area.

The next note worthy and creative idea is how well the mulching is placed around shapely beds. There seem to be two rings an outer courser one and an inner finer one round the plant.

Then sunken tubs for different miniature water lilies.

A curve to the bed shapes rather than the usual squares and rectangles of many I have seen may make it easy to see different varieties and easier to work with having so much space for mulching. The use of grass is still prevalent, although I have seen many private gardens using ground cover plants instead of grass.

I haven’t seen this double ring before. It also seemed that some of the plants were in sunken pots. Everything was carefully labelled with names and well placed.

There are 10 greenhouses 6 of which are open to the public. Here are a few of the many plants I admired for different reasons.

The layers of petals and the clear orange colour of Oribanchacea denben was pleasing to see. Then in a drier warmer place Mimosa thorns, the latter bringing back memories of goats surroundimg low trees with lemon, fluffy flowers. A scene from my childhood days.

The bright pink flowers on this Cactaceae Mammolllaria, neatly spaced, and all blooming together on four of the succulent, green , white thorned heads drew my attention.

Then this Victoria- amazonica. I particularly liked the central stem hub with the lily pads well spaced. A neat plant. A 2.6m diameter leaf is said to only weigh 6.1kg. The leaf air spaces allow for this light but strong surface. Another source had a baby lying on one.

I have a friend whose Air plants / Tillandsien are a pleasure to see so when I saw this wall of them I had to take a photograph for her. I find them fascinating with their more or less silvery leaves covered in trichomes, specialised cells capable of rapidly absorbing water that gathers on them. They will not grow in soil!

And lastly a flower from the spider lily because I enjoyed photographing it.

There is always much, much more to a garden. Münster Botanicle Garden a lovely place to be.

Take care,

Sandy 🙂

Ps

We have decided to continue in spite of the accident. Bugzy is really fine and so are we. Germany has so much more to appreciate.