The Conservatory bills itself as a Horticultural and educational institution. It is over 88 acres and has over 400 species of plants. The grounds really are quite impressive. We went tonight because the first Wednesday of every month is free from 5-8pm. Tonight it was also a member only exclusive preview of their new exhibit "Savage Gardens" so it was a pretty busy evening.Now let me just say this, before I go ANY further...I don't consider myself sophisticated in the least.... and I'm OK with that, however, on this particular night most of the people at the conservatory were members, meaning that they buy a annual pass and come to admire the plants often. Most were dressed very nicely and walked around the conservatory with glasses of wine and cheese plates. My three year old tore threw a crowd of elderly people in his spider man T-shirt and was playing "secret Agent" so I must admit I felt a little out of place. However for those of you who know me, know I never let a little thing like "fitting in" keep me from having an experience and this was a chance to show my kids something new!
We let the 3 year old lead the way and he went straight to the Giant interactive Venus Fly trap. Then we just wandered in and around the different exhibits, the desert, the rain forest, the Japanese gardens just to name a few. The kids loved the Blooms and Butterflies exhibit the most. It was really neat to see the different butterflies, but they were hard to get a picture of! This part of the conservatory also has a look out tower for you to climb, huge koi fish and a waterfall.
This is where they played secret agent....
I have to say that this was a beautiful place and why we enjoyed going, it really does seem better for and older crowd. My 9 year old read some of the signs and liked the real Venus fly traps in the savage garden but the younger two got bored quickly and wanted to move onto the next room before we really had a chance to see anything very closely. That and the fact that we choose a day when it was 95 degrees made it darn near intolerable. I had planned to go walk the grounds, eat a picnic, play on the playground I'd heard was there. But it was just to dang hot!They have several weddings at the conservatory and maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to go to one, in the mean time. They do have cocktails at the conservatory every Thursday night with live music and appetizers for $10 a person. It'd be a fun, swanky, not your run of the mill date night.
