A visit to Tucson Botanical Garden

On our last full day in Tucson, Arizona, we visited the Tucson Botanical Garden. Although we were living at a nearby home surrounded by indigenous plants, I also wanted to visit these gardens. I was intrigued by the website, which showed that Reader’s Digest named it "the BEST Secret Garden in America". I wasn't disappointed.

As well as a range of plants, it also included a small butterfly and orchid pavilion. Come tour the gardens with me ...

With one exception, I didn't take photos of the various trees and cactus. My interests are mainly in colourful flowers. I'll start with an exception though. We were both intrigued by the living stones succulents.

There were many of them, and at times it was difficult to tell the stones from the plants. 

Back to the colourful flowers. These are some of the flowering plants seen around the grounds. 

Notice the large seedpod below the flowers

Now let's go into the orchid pavilion. As always, photos just don't do them justice.

There seems to be a purple theme with the orchids.

Now for more beautiful butterflies, most of which were large. They ranged from a wingspan of around 2 inches (1 cm) to perhaps up to 10 inches (4 cm).

There were many of these butterflies sitting along a window ledge. They were motionless for most of the time. You would perhaps think, with their wings open, they'd have the colouring of the one sitting on the flower in the earlier photo, but that wasn't the case. When they did fly, we saw the dramatic blue tones on the upper side of their wings.

Although this is a poor photo, it's the best I could get as, when they did decide to move, they flitted around the pavilion.

This was the largest butterfly; it was about the size of my foot. All the time we watched it, it was motionless.

There were lots more butterfly varieties to see, most of the time darting in and out among the visitors.

Then there were frogs.

These poison dart frogs had bold, bright markings. They're not native to Arizona, and were the only two I saw in the pavilion. Thankfully, they didn't move either.

In our hometown of Niagara Falls, Canada, there's a large butterfly conservatory. From visiting there I knew that bright clothing, particularly red items, usually attracts butterflies. That wasn't the case here though, as my beige pants attracted this butterfly, who just seemed content to stay with me.

Greg has to swoosh at him to be able to get him to move.

As we exited the pavilion, we were ushered into a small enclosed area, where we were inspected. Staff had to make sure no hitchhiker butterflies were escaping on us.

It was a lovely way to spend our last full day in Tucson. The following day we left for Phoenix, which is where we are now.

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Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Weather: High 85ºF (29ºC) Low 55ºF (13ºC)
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