Deserts, Tropics Firmly Planted In Atlanta Botanical Garden

Exotic orchids, rather than the more traditional home-grown Georgia magnolias, are a main attraction at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

The garden, which is located at the northeast corner of Atlanta's downtown Piedmont Park, offers visitors a rare chance to see orchids that usually grow only at elevations above 6,000 feet.

Staff boast that “for the first time ever, the enormous biodiversity of the cloud forest is on display in a metropolitan area at an elevation of only 1,000 feet.” The High Elevation House replicates the climatic conditions of that forest.

Brilliantly colored plants from the Andes Mountains in South America share a habitat with orchids and sun pitchers from the flat table-top mountains of Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia. The third region represented is southeast Asia, with plants from Mount Kinabalu, the area's highest peak.

The focal point for indoor plant displays is the Fuqua Conservatory. The Tropical Rotunda features palms, orchids, ferns, and begonias, among other plants. Colorful birds fly overhead, and poison dart frogs are available for safe viewing in large tanks.

The Desert House showcases the succulent plans that flourish in a hostile desert environment, and the Orangerie offers tropical and subtropical fruit trees.

The Tropical Display House contains a variety of orchid habitats and includes exhibits devoted to specific types of that flower.

Visitors can also wander around 15 acres of outdoor display gardens.

Partnering with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, staff opened the two-acre Children's Garden in 1999 to emphasize plants that can aid wellness and healing.

Their aim is to offer educational experiences in whimsical packages that will entice children to learn about nature.

Visitors to the Laugh section of the garden enter through the mouth of a huge replica of a caterpillar, skip under awnings simulating the chrysalis, and emerge at the Butterfly Pavillion.

In a three-story tree house, children learn about the transformation from seed to tree and gaze through telescopes at the creatures living in nearby trees.

The Conifer Garden, another outdoor display garden, contains plants that range from a few inches tall to those that tower more than 20 feet high.

Formal boxwood-edged beds are arranged symmetrically around an Italian limestone fountain in the award-winning Parterre Garden. The garden offers year-round color by combining perennials with annuals planted in terra-cotta containers.

For a different type of vegetation, visit the Vine Arbor, which hosts a mixture of native and exotic evergreen and deciduous vines.

The five-acre Woodland Shade Garden provides a transition from formal gardens to woods and contains large native and nonnative trees, as well as unusual shrubs.

Storza Woods, which makes up one-third of the garden's total acreage, will please those who are looking for a less-maintained version of nature.

It is billed as one of the few remaining mature hardwood forests in Atlanta. The woods contain trees such as maples, oaks, tulip poplars, beech, black cherry, and flowering dogwood and wildflowers such as wild ginger.

The woods have been left in a natural state with the exception of a 1.25-mile nature trail.

On the list of activities offered by the Atlanta Botanical Garden is the expected—orchid-care clinic—as well as the more unconventional. Try yoga, Tai Chi, or an introductory course in drawing, for example.

The garden's Sheffield Botanical Library holds more than 3,000 books and 60 periodicals on all aspects of gardening and horticulture.

More information about the Atlanta Botanical Garden, located at 1345 Piedmont Avenue NE, can be obtained by phone at (404) 876-5859 or online at<www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org>.▪