Gardening by Mistake

Chances are you haven’t heard of or visited Powell Gardens. I’m going to show you some of what you’ve been missing!

Powell Gardens sits upon a 915-acre tract of land just east of the Kansas City metro. There are many small gardens making up Powell Gardens. The three acre perennial garden contains more than 1,200 perennial cultivars. There is a children’s garden which highlights edible plants. A new, much larger children’s garden is currently being built. There is a two acre Island Garden, a Rock and Waterfall garden which contains woodlands and two streams, and a 3.5 mile nature trail. The newest garden is the Fountain Garden, a 1.5 acre garden featuring a beautiful fountain kids are invited to play in as well as another water feature. A butterfly garden surrounds this.

Powell Gardens is a bargain, too. For just $60, my husband and 2 kids and I can visit as often as we want for a year. Even better, this membership allows us to visit many other botanical gardens either free or at reduced rates. (Last summer DH and I visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens and the free admission made out visit all the more enjoyable). We’ll be headed back very soon to enjoy their annual butterfly festival.

I’m blessed to live where I can visit not only Powell Gardens but also the Missouri Botanical Gardens across the state, in St. Louis. The Missouri Botanical Gardens are rated as one of the top 10 in the world, and it’s easy to see why when you visit. For my money, though, I prefer Powell Gardens.

At Powell Gardens I can photograph to my heart’s content. And today that was 350 pictures! I am not going to inflict all of those on you, don’t worry! But because I have so many, even pared down, I’m going to break today’s visit into several posts.

The pictures in today’s post are from the newest garden: the Fountain Garden, which is to the north of the Visitor’s Center.

Leaving the Visitor’s Center, we approached the Fountain Garden.

This was my first time seeing the finished garden and I was blown away by. Last summer it was still under construction. The kids could play in the fountain, but the plants hadn’t been planted yet and much hardscaping was still going on. These are some pictures from May 2007:

These are some of the things we saw today on our way to the Fountain Garden:

In the Fountain Garden there is a second water feature, a stream of sorts. From the bottom, looking up:

The beginning of the water feature (below left). To the left of the terra cotta pot in the picture (right), is a water plant about to bloom. It’s a large bloom. This picture doesn’t convey that size very well.

Butterfly gardens surround the fountain itself.

This fountain is beautiful. My kids love to run through it and play in it, as the picture from last year shows.

A color combination I really liked in the planting bordering the fountain.

Also in the butterfly garden surrounding the fountain…

Callirhoe

DH’s sharp eyes saw this monarch butterfly chrysalis. In my recent post about the monarch caterpillar/butterfly, I was lamenting that I didn’t have a nice close-up of the chrysalis. Well, I still don’t have a macro lens, but I did get this. You can see the gold band that is always on the top and the gold “sparkles” around the bottom. There’s even a tiny droplet of water on this one.

Powell Gardens always has some interesting artwork or other exhibit as part of the different gardens. In the past there have been exhibits with giant bugs (bigger than adult men), dinosaurs (really big), and tree houses. Currently, the exhibit is “The Great African Sculpture Exhibit Chapungu: Nature, Man, and Myth.”

This was one of the sculptures near the Fountain Garden.

Barbee’s questions on milkweed made me think back to almost 3 years ago when my kids and I watched two monarch caterpillars grow and become butterflies. I was homeschooling back then and I thought it would make a great addition to our science materials. It was fascinating for all of us.

At the time, I had great big milkweed plants growing among my roses. (BIG mistake; see my earlier post). I began looking on the undersides of leaves. I actually found monarch eggs. They are very tiny and easy to miss on a plant. They are only slightly larger than a period.

I took in an egg and a young caterpillar, as well as some milkweed leaves for them to munch on. I placed all of this into a peanut butter jar, drilled holes into the lid and jammed a stick into the inside of the lid. The stick was intended to be a place where the caterpillars could attach their chrysalises.

The larger of the two caterpillars on August 25th. (The other caterpillar is on the far right, about 1/3 of the way up the picture):

Also on August 25th, this picture shows both caterpillars together. The smaller one is right above the 28.5 cm mark of the ruler. “He” is tiny!

Two days later, August 27th, the larger caterpillar is almost twice as long and twice as wide. In two days!

The little guy has also grown considerably in those two days.

On August 31st, the larger caterpillar was ready to form his chrysalis. You can see in the picture that the caterpillar didn’t need my helpful stick. I have no idea how it got the chrysalis webbing to stick to that plastic lid.

The kids and I waited for the butterfly to emerge. On September 11th, a beautiful monarch emerged from the chrysalis. The second caterpillar was also in a chrysalis by this time.

Here the first caterpillar turned monarch is on our deck, where we placed it while it warmed its wings. The butterfly is holding on to a stick in the second picture.

This last picture was taken September 14th, shortly before the second butterfly emerged from its chrysalis. Look closely and the butterfly’s wings can be seen through the chrysalis.

In zones cooler than my 5b, you might need to look for monarch caterpillars earlier than late August, as I did. You want them to have time to mature and then migrate once they are butterflies. If you do this, you must make sure you have a supply of fresh milkweed leaves as this is the sole diet of monarch caterpillars. And you will be amazed at exactly how much a caterpillar will eat before turning to a butterfly.