November 26, 2015: Thanksgiving in Dallas | |
October 17 - November 2, 2015: Our Fall Trip to Florida | |
Return to the Index for 2015 |
Prudence and Ron have come up to Dallas for a few days to visit Nancy and Karl, and as we have done before, we've invited Guy to stay with us instead of at Nancy's house. Today, Sunday, Fred, Guy and I are going to make our second trip to the Arboretum's Fall Festival- this time with someone who hasn't seen it before. There was an album page for our visit in late September, and if you have already been through that page, you might find this one a bit repetitive, although it features pictures of Guy while the visit in September was just Fred and myself.
Getting to the Dallas Arboretum
The bike path used to cross the top of the dam, but for one reason or another, the bike path was rerouted a year ago, and now it goes through some parkland and playing fields south of the dam, across the spillway, up Garland Road for a ways, and then back north along the lake shore.
You can also see a closer view of the Arboretum in this picture, and can begin to pick out some of the pathways through the gardens.
You can also see the maze of pathways that criss-cross the gardens.
The three of us had some breakfast at the Original House of Pancakes and then actually took Northwest Highway across town to Buckner Boulevard, which we took south to Gaston Avenue. Then we came back southwest to the main Arboretum entrance. We usually make a circular transit of the entire Arboretum each time we visit, and we will do that today. We'll start out on the Paseo del Flores- the main walkway through the Gardens- which we'll take all the way to the Rory Meyers Children's Adventure Garden at the east end of the property. Then we will work our way back to the entry through the northern part of the gardens.
|
On our way to the Children's Garden, we'll make the following stops:
1. Trammel Crow Entry Plaza
2. America's Selection Trial Garden
3. Paseo del Flores
4. Garden of Memories
5. Pumpkin Village
6. Paseo del Flores
7. Red Maple Rill
8. Lay Family Garden
The Paseo is the main walkway through the gardens. It begins at the Arboretum Entry, where during the Fall Festival there is a display of fall plants as well as pumpkins and gourds. The Paseo leads past the display gardens, where there is always a lot of color, and then past the Pumpkin Village. I might point out that the Fall Festival really ends shortly after Halloween, although the Pumpkin Village remains up on past Thanksgiving. But as I pointed out in September, the Arboretum begins allowing patrons to buy and carry off many of the pumpkins and gourds beginning on Halloween, and so the displays are somewhat depleted by this time.
We'll take the Paseo all the way back to the Children's Garden, and then we will work our way back to the entry through the Lay Family Garden, the Red Maple Rill, the Woman's Garden and the Jonsson Color Garden. This circular route will give Guy the full tour (even though he has been here with us before during "Dallas Blooms!", the Arboretum's Spring event.
With that bit of orientation in mind, we can look at some of the many pictures we took on our visit today.
At the Arboretum Main Entry
|
When we were last here, at the height of the Fall Fesitval, there were huge displays of pumpkins and gourds in the middle of and all around the entrance plaza. Now, however, almost all of them were gone, replaced by seasonal flowers. I got Guy and Fred to pose by some of those fall flowers.
We took twp other pictures here in the entry plaza, and there are clickable thumbnails below for them:
Along the Paseo del Flores
|
Passing the trial garden, we came to an intersection in the walkway (3) where you could look over towards the Jonsson Color Garden and the Arboretum's main lawn. We could see something we hadn't expected- one of the "Twelve Days of Christmas Carousels" that adorn the Gardens for the Holiday season. I hadn't expected that they would be up so soon, but as it turned out, the Arboretum was in the midst of erecting the complicated structures. Some were pretty well finished, but we saw others where just the framework was up or the site was still being prepared.
In the picture at left, taken from a different vantage point, you can see one of the carousels over on the main lawn near the portcullis of the DeGolyer House.
It was a bit of a surprise to see the carousels were going up, and you'll see some other pictures where they appear on this page. Although I did an exhaustive web page about them on our visit last year with Ron, Prudence, Karl, Nancy and Guy, I did take a few other pictures of them today.
|
Also at this stop (3) is a new fountain; it is not ornate, nor is it very large, but it offers a nice place to sit and contemplate the gardens around you. It is actually part of the Garden of Memories, which consists of the fountain and this small garden. It was given to the Arboretum a year or so ago by a patron in honor of another family member.
We continued along the Paseo a short distance to our 4th stop- right by the carousel illustrating the Twelfth Day of Christmas- " Twelve Drummers Drumming". I might point out that the carousels are so arranged so that, beginning at the installation for the first day of Christmas, visitors can make a big circle through the gardens by going up and around the Jonsson Color Garden, past the DeGolyer House and through the Womans Garden and then around the rest of the gardens before returning along the Paseo del Flores to this carousel. We were able to get right up next to this carousel, so I took a close-up picture of the twelve drummers so you could see what the interior of one of these carousels was like.
Then we crossed the Paseo into the area set aside for the Fall Festival's Pumpkin Village.
Pumpkin Village
|
The pumpkins, along with a huge variety and huge number of other types of gourds, are also used as decorative elements not only here in Pumpkin Village but also throughout the gardens. Some of those remain well into November, but on our visit today, most of them are gone, associated as they are with Halloween and Thanksgiving. With Thanksgiving, the traditional opening of the Christmas season, just over a week away, the gardens are being transformed from pumpkins to carousels.
The other use to which the pumpkins are put is as a construction material for building a series of structures adjacent to the pumpkin display; these structures are collectively referred to as Pumpkin Village. Each year, the structures are different; a year ago it was fairy tales, and this year it was the western frontier.
|
You can see that the pumpkins and large gourds are actually sitting in metal holders, and are put close enough together to give the impression that the pumpkins are just stacked into walls.
On either side of the post office structure there were what are supposed to look like wanted posters (as you would have seen in a frontier building. They are actually photo ops, as you can stick your face in from the back while someone takes a picture from the front. Mostly for kids, we went ahead and did it anyway, and so I have pictures of each of us (click on the thumbnails below to view):
The Pumpkin Village is a really neat area, and the Arboretum does a lot of work each year to make it special. At one point while we were here, I stood in one place and took a series of eight pictures, scanning across the area. I then stitched them together into a single panorama. Here, in a scrollable window, is that panorama:
We enjoyed showing Pumpkin Village to Guy, and I think he thought it was pretty amazing. Although we've been to the Arboretum before with Guy, I am pretty sure this was his first time at the Fall Festival.
|
|
|
Along the Paseo del Flores
|
Here are clickable thumbnails for two more pictures of the area where we stopped to enjoy the fountain:
We didn't end up going down into the Maple Rill or the Magnolia Allee on our way to the Children's Garden, but we just hung out around the fountain. I think when we come back from the Children's Garden we'll walk through both of them. As it turned out, another of the carousels had been set up adjacent to the entrance to the Magnolia Allee, so I walked over to have a look at it. It turned out to be the carousel for the Eleventh Day, and contained eleven pipers piping.
|
|
We continued our walk to the end of the Paseo (8), where we could look into the old entry to the Lay Family Garden which is now a huge bed of flowers; that's the picture at right.
Then we walked around the south side of the Lay Garden to come to the entrance to the Rory Meyers Garden.
In the Rory Meyers Children's Adventure Garden
|
From the entrance (1) where Fred got this picture of Guy and myself, we took Guy across the circular area at the entrance where misters play over the visitors in the summertime, and down the stairs to go underneath and behind the waterfall cascade that comes across the roof above you to fall in a sheer, shimmering, unbroken curtain into the pool below. This is a fun place to come, and a cool one in the summertime. While we were here, I used my camera extender to take a picture of the three of&us, looking through the curtain of water behind us. Notice how you can see through the water, but what you see is very rippled.
|
|
I also took a couple of pictures from our perch on top of the Discovery Center, both looking out across the Adventure Garden:
This is part of the Texas Skywalk that leads from where we are now to the tower in the middle of garden. There are stairs there down to the exhibit areas. |
You can see the tower at the end of the Skywalk behind us, much of the garden and White Rock Lake in the background. |
As I said, we were on the roof of the Discovery Center, so we took Guy down to have a look inside. It is a pretty amazing structure- particularly for what is ostensibly a facility (the Arboretum) devoted to horticulture.
The Discovery Center contains a working planetarium. Unlike others, projections are made onto the globe in the center of the room, rather than onto the ceiling. The globe can display anything- from star maps to Earth's weather patterns. |
Outside the planetarium, there is a large room that is half working laboratory, with constant demonstrations, and half research facility with networked workstations. |
From the Discovery Center, we went outside and began wandering around this level of the garden. On the west side of the Adventure Garden are a number of educational exhibits and interaction stations interspersed with small beds of different kinds of plants (4).
|
Here are clickable thumbnails for some of the pictures we took as we were wandering through these outdoor exhibits:
|
In the middle of the Adventure garden to the north of the Discovery Center is a large lagoon (5). On one side is a walkway with exhibits and things that kids can do (like shoot water cannons to make mobile sculptures move) that leads to the Texas Tower in the center of the area.
On the other side of the lagoon is a raised platform that runs the length of the kidney-bean-shaped pond, and on that platform are more activities for kids of all ages. There are things to try, things to move and things to just touch; everything is designed to engage the kid in the learning experience. Here are more views of this area as we approached the tower:
We took the stairs up the Texas Tower which brought us to the beginning of the Texas Skywalk; that would eventually lead us back to the roof of the Discovery Center. The view from up here (6) was pretty neat- especially looking back towards the entrance:
I made a movie from up here, and took another picture looking down at the lagoon and its exhibit areas. You can use the player at left, below, to watch the movie; the picture is on the right:
My Movie Taken from the Top of the Texas Tower |
We walked back along the Texas Skyway to the level of the Discovery Center's roof garden, and then back up the winding pathway to the entrance to the Adventure Garden. Just off to the side was one of the entrances back into the Arboretum proper- a walkway into the Lay Family Garden.
|
The Lay Family Garden (1)
The path back into the garden brings you around through an artificial waterfall and grotto. The waterfall is very nicely-done, and in the rock walls behind the falls there are actual fossils- mostly amonites from Lake Texoma- to give the walls an authentic look. There are benches where you can sit down and look through the falls to the rest of the Lay Garden.
The renovation kept other aspects of the 1989 garden- including the four curtain wall falls and the koi ponds. I went through the grotto and walked a bit further down the walkway, and then took a series of five pictures which I put together into this panorama of the Lay Garden:
You can see the grotto on the left, and the Adventure Garden is beyond the big tree across the koi pond. The curtain-wall falls are in the structures right of center.
The Red Maple Rill
From the Rill to the Woman's Garden
|
|
We walked up the walkway to come out at the east end of the Woman's Garden, and there we found yet another carousel.
A Woman's Garden
|
|
I mentioned above that the Woman's Garden was very geometric, and you can easily see what I mean in the picture I took from the top of the steps leading to the Jonsson Color Garden (8) where I was looking back across the Woman's Garden at the carousel we just saw. You can see that picture here.
The Jonsson Color Garden
|
As we began walking along the outside north walkway around the Color Garden, I made a movie, and you can use the player below to watch it.
|
Towards the end of the Color Garden near the Fern Dell we came to the last of the carousels in this area, the Three French Hens. I actually didn't see the French Hens in the enclosure, or hear any music, so no movie here. Before we left the Color Garden, I took a couple of additional pictures as the overcast thickened:
We really enjoyed bringing Guy over to the Arboretum today; it is always a pleasure to take visitors through the Gardens. The membership certainly has been worthwhile.
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
November 26, 2015: Thanksgiving in Dallas | |
October 17 - November 2, 2015: Our Fall Trip to Florida | |
Return to the Index for 2015 |