The Conservatory

Now that most of our pressing house projects are off our plates, we decided to do something fun together this weekend! And with the weather continuing to be so cold, it had to be an indoors fun thing. And preferably a free fun thing. We decided on a trip to the Volunteer Park Conservatory.

The conservatory is made up of several connected glass houses and each has it's own temperature, humidity, and collection of exotic plants which makes the whole place feel like a field trip to another land. There's the palm house with it's jungle-like feel, the seasonal house which is always full of lots of color and flowers in bloom that I often recognize from local gardens, the desert house, the bromeliad house, and my favorite, the fern house.

The air in the fern house is heavy and warm and it has a grotto. Actually I think they call it a bog, but there's a an area in the middle that is dark and cave-like with plants tumbling down into pools of water. There's even a little waterfall. And the plants here are huge and strange. If you ever visit Seattle, you should check it out. Here are a few photos:


There's Beck and the entrance. It was built in 1912 and modeled after London's Crystal Palace.


Inside the seasonal house.


The boys saw this giant orange when we first walked in. Beck shouted, "A big apple!" and ran straight toward it. It was probably some kind of rare specimen or something and I noticed a few visitors looking on with alarm. I turned on the good mom routine and shouted for him to stop even though I had to chuckle to myself at the whole scene. And I knew he wouldn't touch it!