Tag Archives: Garden Railway

I Went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens

Recently, I spent a few days in Tucson, Arizona. One of the highlights of the trip, for me, was a visit to the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

Located on what was originally a family estate (the Porters) with the house and surrounding gardens, the exhibition these days shows the variety of garden possibilities, even in an unforgiving climate.

Butterflies

They’ve also got a butterfly pavilion – but it’s only open till 3 p.m. so make sure to go earlier if you want to see them. While I was there, employees were still decorating for the holidays. I’ve included a photo of workers fashioning a tree out of cacti and succulents.

Fresh Air

I loved how fresh and clean and scented the air was. What a wonderful retreat! I’ll definitely be going back the next time I’m in Tucson.

Enjoy the photo diary – I’ll try to caption to the best of my memory (and the brochure) . . .

  • The wooden front gates had some bottle glass art.
  • Garden artisans making a Christmas tree out of succulents
  • A mighty Saguaro cactus
  • Getting lots of ideas for my balcony garden here. Container succulents.
  • I liked this arrangement of succulents.
  • Explaining how to grow herbs in the desert.
  • Herb arrangement in the garden.
  • Container rationale.
  • Container garden.
  • Part of the Thornville Garden Railway.
  • Part of the Thornville Garden Railway.
  • The Nuestro Jardín (Barrio Garden) shows how people garden in their own neighborhoods. Here’s an old sink as a pot.
  • Memory shrine in the Barrio Garden.
  • Christmas Tree in the Barrio Garden
  • Barrio Garden arrangement of plants on a ladder structure. Loved this idea.
  • Bicycle as a garden structure.
  • Just some pretty flowers.
  • Looks real, but it’s a metal fountain!
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Kevin & Jim’s Garden Railway in Mukwonago, Wisconsin

Yesterday, I went out to Mukwonago to visit old college-era friend Kevin Ylvisaker and his partner Jim Hunnicutt. They live in a 120-year old farm house complete with a barn. One of the more entertaining things we did was examine the still in-process (for the summer season) Garden Railway. Pictures above of some of it – though there are better pix on their own site here (Rocky Lights Railroad). Their project was also the cover story for the December 2006 Garden Railways magazine, which also has pictures.

Kevin showed me some embarrassing pictures from the 1970s which he’s promised to post to Facebook, so I guess we’ll see. . . they seemed harmless enough and brought back some good memories. Then we went to lunch a local biker bar Mustang Shelly’s – no doubt there are similar places everywhere but it reminded me so much of the Midwest in the summer.

I love this area of Wisconsin, the rolling hills, small farms, small towns with old Victorians, etc – especially in the summer with the crops in the fields and the leaves on the trees. I was reminded that the next town over is Genesee Depot, which was the home of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. It’s the gateway to the Kettle Moraine, where the glaciers stopped in the last ice age and deposited all the rocks and melted into all the lakes (that dot Wisconsin and Minnesota).

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