November 25, 2021: Thanksgiving at Ruckman Haus in San Antonio
	November 9, 2021: "Turner's Modern World" at the Kimbell Art Museum
	Return to the Index for 2021

When we finished at the Turner exhibit at the Kimbell, Prudence, Nancy, and Soon wanted to do something else, as we would not be having dinner for a while yet, so the five of us decided to drive a short ways down University Avenue to the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden (110 acres) is a botanical garden located at 3220 Botanic Garden Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas. The garden was established in 1934 and is the oldest major botanic garden in Texas. It is located in the heart of the cultural district.

The botanic garden started with development of the 37.5 acres Rock Springs Park in 1912 involving natural springs, streams and rock features. This was completed for the opening of the botanic garden in 1934. This area was redeveloped from 2013 as the Tinsley Rock Springs Garden, restoring the water features and re-planting with plants native to north Texas.

In 2011 new buildings for the Botanical Research Institute of Texas were opened adjacent to the botanic garden.

Below is a map of the Botanic Garden so that you can get a better idea of where everything is- and particularly so I can mark the stops we made (as we did not visit every area of the garden). Oddly, the garden map is not oriented as you might think; on the map, north is to the right, rather than at the top. So south is to the left, west is at the top, and east is at the bottom. In other words, the garden where we spent the most time- the Japanese Garden- is on the west side of the garden complex. (Complicating things is the fact that on the map, there is an entrance to the garden at the left marked "West Entrance", which might lead you to think that the entrance comes from the west. It doesn't; it comes from a street called "West Fwy", which is actually the southern border of the garden. I an only suppose that someone labeled it such because it happens to be the westernmost entry to the botanic garden, but actually, I think it is just a mistake.)

Deborah Beggs Moncrief Garden Center

From the first moments after we parked and approached the Botanic Garden entrance, the attention paid to the plants and flowers was evident, with a beautiful Fall display lining the walkway to the Garden Center. The Center was dedicated in 1986 and is located at the entrance of the Botanic Garden. It is home to the Conservatory and offers 17,000 square feet of offices, rentable space, an auditorium, and more.

We spent some time towards the end of our visit walking through the Conservatory, which is reminiscent of the much larger constructions at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. But this one was large enough and pleasant to walk through, what with its waterfall and wide selection of tropical plants. Here are a photo and movie taken in the Conservatory:

The central feature of the Conservatory is this large waterfall. It provides humidity, of course, but also a very pleasant background sound as one is following the walkway through the greenhouse.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) I made a movie of our walk through the Conservatory, and you can use the movie player above to come along with us.

The Margery Leonard Courtyard

The Margery Leonard Courtyard is an open courtyard filled with seasonal blooms. It is basically a large, flower filled patio located between the Garden Center and the Fuller Garden. We stopped here for a couple of pictures:

The Adelaide Polk Fuller Garden

This garden area is just west of the Garden Center and Leonard Courtyard, and this was the next stop we made.

The Fuller Garden is a 3.5 acre lighted display garden that highlights a dynamic representation of stone hardscapes, trellises, water features, and seasonal color plantings. The Fuller Garden also includes a comprehensive collection of trees, shrubs, perennials, and turf.

Dedicated to Adelaide Polk Fuller, the Garden was designed to symbolize life’s journey. The trellis garden area represents the predictability of childhood; the trellises represent reaching milestones in adolescence. The warm colors found in the seasonal plantings represent the rushed pace of life. Seating near the trellises gives you a spot to ponder what you’ve done and where you’re going. The gazebo embodies the refinement of adulthood. However, behind the refined and stately gazebo is a playful cascade of water, representing Mrs. Fuller’s whimsical nature. At the reflection pond, one should be able to look back at both adulthood (the gazebo) and childhood (the trellis garden).

The Fuller Garden was a pleasant place (as was intended); here are some of the pictures we took here:

The Trellises

Seasonal Color in the Fuller Garden

Bougainvillea

A Botanic Garden Visitor

Native Texas Boardwalk

From the Fuller Garden, visitors to the Botanic Garden now head south to get to the gardens in the southwestern portion of the Botanic Garden grounds. (If you are following along on the garden map above, keep in mind that the map is oriented with west at the top, so when we move to the "left" on the map, we are headed south.) This walkway begins as we pass some elevated plant beds that line the walkway as it leaves an open area of the garden and enters into the shady, tree-covered area through which the boardwalk runs.

In one of the beds, shown at left, there were colorful little plastic "pitchers" arranged in tight circles. Of course, if there were real plants that grew like this, everyone would have them.

Before we got to the actual Boardwalk, though, sited right at the edge of the forested area, we found a special installation.

Stickwork, a structure by acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty, is on the grounds as one of his site-specific artworks unique to Fort Worth. Dougherty bends, weaves, and twines twigs and saplings into massive shelters, towers and sculptures, each as unique as the site where it is built.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Dougherty was raised in North Carolina and received a B.A. in English from UNC and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa. Eventually he returned to the University of North Carolina to study art history and sculpture.

Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982 his first work, Maple Body Wrap, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artists’ Exhibition, and in 1983 he had his first one-person show at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last thirty-some years, he has built over 300 of these works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculptures have been installed and seen all over the United States and worldwide. (Incidentally, if you would like to learn more about Dougherty and see many examples of his "stickwork" you can visit his website, www.stickwork.net.)

This installation, like many that Patrick Dougherty does, is "interactive", meaning that visitors can walk up to and most times through it, and that's what we did here. As we were walking around, Fred took some good, fun pictures, and you can click on the thumbnails below to have a look at some of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Just past this installation, we came to the start of the Native Texas Boardwalk- a living outdoor classroom. This elevated walkway was planted with native species growing on the east side and invasive species growing on the west side. There are thirteen educational stations for children along the way, such as a hollow log, speaking tubes, and balance beams. The Boardwalk provides a quick and shaded pathway from the northern gardens (Fuller and Garden Center) to the southern ones (Rose, Perennial, Trial, and Japanese gardens).

Performance Lawn and the Rock Springs Cafe

Continuing south on the Boardwalk, we eventually came to a park road the heads southwest past the Rock Springs Cafe to the various gardens in the southern area of the Botanic Garden. Just on the east side of this road we found an open lawn adjacent to the oval rose garden to the south, and here were two sculptures.

"Spirit of Woman" The frontier woman waves her family home from the field at dusk when the work was done. this image pervades our sense of women of the Southwest. We present her with cloth flag in her long skirts, invariably beautiful, strong and protective and compassionate.

"Birth of Love" This large, totemic, circular bronze features a light green patina and is located on the lawn east of the Oval Rose Garden. The piece by Michael Pavlovsky was commissioned by the Moncrief Endowment Fund.

The Rock Springs Cafe

We are in an area called "The Vistas." The North Vista is between the Boardwalk and the woodlands (and is the location of the "Spirit of Woman" statue), and the South Vista lies between the Rose Garden and the woodlands (and is the site of "Birth of Love". Vistas became popular during the French Renaissance. These open areas are a classical landscape most popularly featured in the Palace of Versailles. Here, the vistas are used as a strolling area and as concert grounds during Concert in the Gardens.

From here, we continued down the park road past the Rock Springs Cafe, shown at left.

The Fall plantings outside the cafe were really quite beautiful. Like the Arboretum, the gardens have made liberal use of gourds and pumpkins for decoration during the season. Here are a couple of views outside the cafe:

Walking south, ahead of Nancy, I had my phone do a panoramic view looking back towards the cafe:

Nancy stopped to take a couple of her own pictures of the fall plantings, and we took a couple of pictures of her, and you can see those pictures here and here.

The Perennial Garden

At the "bottom" of Rock Springs Road, where it makes a turnaround, we found the Perennial Garden and other highlights of the Botanic Garden.

The Perennial Garden is a year-round experience with both wet and dry, shady and sunny areas. Spring and autumn bring beautiful bursts of color while other plants thrive under the summer sun. Even in winter, this garden is rarely bare of blooms. Bulbs and shrubs enhance the landscape, adding to the continuity of color and form.

The Perennial Garden is a great area to visit if you are searching for new plants to add to your collection. Labels for plants growing in and around the Perennial Garden have been provided by the Tarrant County Master Gardeners.

Here is a view of the central area of the Perennial Garden:

In the center of the Perennial Garden there is a nice water feature, and in the center is a sculpture of cranes- standing and taking flight.

"Fishing Rock" by Bob Guelich

As it turns out, Bob Guelich is one of the two sculptors that Prudence has in her gallery in San Antonio, and Guelich did this sculpture of the cranes. Guelich began painting the animals he saw in the Aleutian Islands while in the Coast Guard, but he soon turned to sculpture, feeling that the third dimension better expressed his creativity and love for animals.

Guelich has become very well-known, and you can find his sculptures in the Kansas City Zoo; the Frederik Meijer Garden and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the Benson Sculpture Park in Loveland, Colorado; at Rice University and the University of Notre Dame; and even at the Mayo Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota. Other monumental commissions include works for the San Antonio, Omaha, and Houston zoos.

Bob has, of course, a great many awards for his work, and is one of the premier animal-image sculptors in the country. Prudence actually purchased his mid-size bronze sculpture of a bear climbing a tree, and it now is on permanent display in her gallery.

The Rose Garden

One of the most romantic gardens and on the National Register of Historic Places, the Rose Garden was built with 4,000 tons of Palo Pinto County sandstone and completed in 1933. After years of work, the Rose Garden was rededicated on October 15, 2017.

The Shelter House The historic Shelter House sits high above the Rose Ramp and provides a panoramic view of the Lower Rose Garden and Reflection Pond.

The Rose Ramp The Rose Ramp is located just below the Shelter House and features stone walkways that wind past beds of roses flower beds and a beautiful cascade of water down the center.

The Lower Rose Garden The Lower Rose Garden is located at the bottom of the Rose Ramp and features seasonal beds on either side.

The Republic of Texas Rose Garden Located between the Oval and Lower Rose Garden, this garden offers winding paths through beautiful flower beds and trellises.

We inadvertently bypassed the Oval Rose Garden when we took the road past the Rock Springs Cafe. In the pictures above, the the Oval Rose Garden is out of view to the left, connected to the main Rose Garden by a colonnade of nine stone and wood trellises. Four portals provide entrances to the Oval Rose Garden and at its center is a stone gazebo. In these pictures, you can just see the Reflection Pond– one of the garden's most notable water features with a beautiful fountain in the middle. Turtles often can be seen sunning on the sides while goldfish swim lazily through the water.

Coming down off the Shelter House, there was a garden glade off to our left, bordered by some beautiful azaleas. So we made a stop here- all taking turns getting photographed sitting on the Butterfly Bench (actually a sculpture installation).

Fred, as you have deduced, is the only one who didn't want to mug for the camera.

The Japanese Garden

The Fort Worth Japanese Garden is a 7.5-acre garden built in 1973. Many of the plants and construction materials were donated by Fort Worth's sister city Nagaoka, Japan. Attractions at the garden include a zen garden, a moon viewing (tsukimi) deck, waterfalls, cherry trees, Japanese maples, a pagoda, and fishfood dispensers to feed the hundreds of koi in the Japanese Garden's three ponds. The garden hosts two annual events, the Spring Festival and the Fall Festival, featuring demonstrations of Japanese art and culture.

We entered the Japanese garden from the south; the garden extends south to north, being longer in that direction than it is east to west.

I have obtained a map of just the Japanese Garden, and because it is longer in one direction than the other, I have oriented it on this page so south is at the left and north at the right. So we will be entering from the left, working our way through the garden, and exiting at the right (at the exit that is near #9 on the diagram).

As we go through the garden, and as I put our pictures on this page, I'll use those reference numbers to show you where we are (and, of course, what each number identifies). I find that it often helps to know the relationship of the photographs in space; it gives a better feeling of having walked through the garden yourself.

Except in the spring, there are few flowers blooming in the Japanese Garden due to the Japanese practice of "mono no aware". "Mono no aware" translates to “transient/bittersweet beauty”, meaning if the garden was always blooming, it would never be special.

Garden Entry

The entry to the Japanese Garden in at its south end; this is where the ticket office and other facilities are. There is an exit at the north end.

At left, you can see the south entrance (main entrance) to the Japanese Garden. We walked over here along some pathways that led from the Rose Garden overlook and passed south of the Cactus Garden.

The Fort Worth Japanese Garden was originally constructed with materials donated from numerous individuals, businesses, and institutions in north Texas and elsewhere in the USA. In the 1990s, Fort Worth's Japanese sister city, Nagaoka, donated an authentic Mikoshi (a sacred palanquin) to Fort Worth, which is currently housed within the garden's precincts. Several trees, including pines and flowering cherries, were similarly donated. Finally, Mr. Shigeichi Suzuki, a landscape architect from Nagaoka, donated plans for a karesansui-style addition to the Garden in 1997. The addition was completed in 2000, and is now called the 'Suzuki Garden'.

Just inside the entry gate, there is an open plaza with the ticket office, facilities, and a number of informational signs (from which much of the information in this section of this album page is being drawn). Here is what that area looks like:

Looking at the picture above, (and referring to the garden map above), we took the walkway leading out of the plaza (#2 on the diagram) to head down the walkway into the center of the garden. The walkway we took is the one with the little lines indicating a set of stairs.

I was a little ahead of everyone else on our way down into the garden.

Standing just at the top of that set of stairs, I took the picture at right, looking down towards the lake in the center of the gardens.

I went on down those stairs, and turned to see Nancy and Prudence coming down the walkway towards me, and of course that's when I took the picture at left.

Suzuki Garden/Karesansui Dry Landscape Garden

Fred took a little different route from the entry plaza, heading over to the zen gardens originally completed in 2000 (see above). There he took a couple of good pictures of these classic Japanese-style meditative gardens

The Karesansui Garden

The 'Karesansui Garden' (formerly called the 'Meditation Garden'), is patterned after Kyoto's famous 'Garden of the Abbot's Quarters', at the Ryoanji temple complex. It is a classic fifteen-stone, 'Hira niwa' (Flat Garden) composition, that has its own unique characteristics. One of them is an elevated and enclosed viewing veranda, evocative of a Japanese-style roofed bridge (rokyo). It surrounds the flat garden, allowing it to be viewed from all sides. Another is the exclusion of plant material from the exhibit's core. The fifteen boulders are surrounded by patterned gravel (samon), enclosed within a stone retainer, and surrounded by black volcanic scoria. The only plants allowed to flourish within this composition are the fruticose lichens which have colonized the boulder's surfaces. This minimalist exhibit stands as an exuisite metaphor of the famously sparse Zen aesthetic.

Now we have one of the many oddly-coincidental associations that have been found throughout this photo album. As it turns out, I have actually been to "Kyoto's famous 'Garden of the Abbot's Quarters', at the Ryoanji temple complex".

The "Garden of the Abbot's Quarters"

I visited there in 1971 on my second trip to Japan in 1971 (when I traveled there from my duty station north of Seoul, South Korea). At right is one of the two pictures I took of that actual garden. Here is my commentary that I wrote at that time:

"The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous Zen garden, the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought to have been built in the late 15th century. The garden is a rectangle of 2700 square feet, almost exactly 90 feet by 30 feet. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones."

The "Garden of the Abbot's Quarters"

At left is the second picture that I took of the actual garden at the Ryoanji temple in Kyoto. And here is more of the commentary I wrote then:

" The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery. The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda; no matter where you sit, you can never see all fifteen stones. The maximum is 14- one shy of the entire composition. It is said that this is to impress upon the viewer that unless one attains true enlightenment, some part of the natural world will always remain hidden."

Having taken that short trip down memory lane by going to the photo album pages for that year, it occurs to me that if you have an interest in the Japanese Garden in Fort Worth, that interest might extend to more things Japanese, and thus you might find it interesting to go along with me on that visit to Japan in 1971 (and on my first trip to Japan that I made earlier that year). If you would like to look at the pictures from either trip, let me offer you a link that will take you to the index for my album pages for 1971.

If you choose to follow that link, I'll open that page in a new tab in your browser, so you'll easily be able to return here, and continue through the Japanese Garden. Here is that link: Photo Album Index for 1971.

Fred also took two pictures of the Suzuki Garden:

Lake Arbor/Waterfall Overlook

The walk we came down took us straight onto a platform overlooking the lake- the Lake Arbor (#5). From here there were beautiful views out across the southern end of the lake that winds through the Japanese Garden.

The View from the Lake Arbor

As you can see from the diagram map of the Japanese Garden above, the beautiful lake winds through the garden, and there are numerous bridges and little overlooks all around it.

It is also, it seems, filled with koi, and some people (as we would see shortly) enjoy feeding them. Here at the Lake Arbor, though, all I saw was some of the koi below me in the water. When he arrived on the Lake Arbor platform, Fred took better pictures of the koi, and here are a few of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Here are a couple more pictures I took from the Lake Arbor before the others joined me on the platform:

Eventually, the other four came up onto the platform as well, and this offered more photographic opportunities:

When Prudence, Soon, and Nancy came up onto the Lake Arbor, I had to really move as far back as possible to get this picture of the three of them.

Fred, who'd been over in the Suzuki Garden, joined them after I'd walked a ways from the Arbor, but I did get this picture of all my companions today.

That last picture was taken from the spot labeled #6 on the garden map, and it offered me a different panoramic view of the lake. I took three separate pictures and stitched them together (the Lake Arbor being out of view to the left):

At the Checkerboard Bridge

You may have noticed on the map of the Japanese Garden that the large lake is actually kind of broken into three parts. In the extreme southwest of the garden, near the gift shop, there is one small lake, and the second is the area of the lake overlooked by the Lake Arbor. When we walked around the east side of this section of the lake we went along the walkway leading to the Checkerboard Bridge, which goes over a narrow channel that connects to the third major section of the beautiful water feature that is the centerpiece of the Japanese Garden.

I walked out onto the small bridge and made a movie of the koi swimming around below me as a couple of girls were feeding them. Soon, Prudence, and Nancy joined me here, and Fred took a picture of us from a short distance away.

Soon is talking to the two young women, and Prudence and I are on the bridge. I am just about to start my movie.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) Here is the movie that I made from the Checkerboard Bridge.

Here are two more pictures that Fred took from here at the Checkerboard Bridge:

In this zoomed view, some turtles are sunning themselves on a tiny island across the pond.

There were even more koi here than over at the Lake Arbor- probably because they were getting fed.

The area around the Checkerboard Bridge was really neat; on the other side of the bridge from the young women feeding the koi there was a very pleasant waterfall.

The Waterfall Above the Checkerboard Bridge

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) A Movie of the Waterfall and the Japanese Garden

The Moon Bridge

We continued our walk on the winding pathways east of the pond as we headed north towards the Moon Bridge. Here are two nice views of the garden as we started out:

Fred in the Japanese Garden

The Moon Bridge in the Distance

We walked leisurely along the winding pathways towards the Moon Bridge- a small, arched bridge that leads to a small island in the pond. Here are two views of the Moon Bridge- mine taken from the island itself and Fred's from the walkway on the east side of the pond:

I crossed over the Moon Bridge to the little island and was able to get back just far enough to get the entire bridge in the picture.

Fred stayed on the walkway along the east side of the pond and got this view of the Moon Bridge.

Our Walk to the Teahouse at the North End of the Japanese Garden

From the Moon Bridge, we continued north to the end of the Japanese Garden, following the winding walkways that led along the east side of the pond.

The Teahouse

Right past the Teahouse, at the end of the pond, another garden visitor was sunning itself on a little island. Fred got the good pictures left and below:

At the exit from the Japanese Garden, we began our walk back to the garden center, after a very enjoyable stroll through the Botanic Garden. Fred and I are not familiar with the layout of this garden; unlike the Arboretum, which we have visited more times than we can count, this was only my second visit here. So we haven't seen everything, and at some point we should come back and see more of these beautiful grounds.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	November 25, 2021: Thanksgiving at Ruckman Haus in San Antonio
	November 9, 2021: "Turner's Modern World" at the Kimbell Art Museum
	Return to the Index for 2021