Balboa Park - Part II

Our recent visit to Balboa Park in San Diego was full of surprises. The park is huge, the flowers and gardens are beautiful, and the architecture is amazing. One thing I was excited to see was the arboretum. There are ponds of water lilies leading up to it. It's open to the outside with graceful arches to enter...


The roof is magnificent, tall and open to the outside air with slits between the wood. This is looking up at the center from the inside...


It's filled with tropical plants and some sections are like a mini jungle...


There's a section with plants that catch bugs like this pitcher plant...


This plant would be hard to miss. The color is incredible!


I love the swirls in this one...


These flowers are so tiny that they were hard to photograph. When I had my camera in manual mode, I had a hard time seeing if it was focused well. In auto mode, my camera couldn't figure out where to focus. They're so cute!


I'm not sure what kind of plant this was before it was cut down but the pattern in it was interesting...


More tiny flowers. So pretty...




There were a lot of different kinds of orchids. I'm constantly surprised at stores and at this arboretum by varieties I've never seen. I wonder how many varieties there are? It's pretty incredible. Here's a sampling of what I saw that day...


























There were little surprises tucked in here and there among the plants like this stringy, orange puff ball flower...


These leaves look like they were splattered with bleech...


There were lots of ferns. I thought this one was especially pretty with two colors of green...


There were a bunch of plants hanging on the walls at one end of the arboretum.
This one was HUGE! I thought it was called an Elk's Head Bromeliad but I just Googled that and I think I had it wrong. Oh well. It's pretty cool to see...


They had a coffee plant! I had to get a picture of that!


Then, it was back outside to the lovely ponds and lilies.


And, more beautiful flowers.


I love this one!


Thanks for stopping by! My next post will be a sampling of the amazing architecture at Balboa Park. I hope you'll come back. :-)