Boyce Thompson Arboretum

 

I went to the most amazing arboretum yesterday -- the Boyce Thompson Arboretum way north of Tucson out in the middle of the "desert" by the Superstition Mountains.

I went with three friends who were looking perky despite getting up at dawn for the one and a half hour drive to get there when it opened before it got too hot.

It's enormous! It covers 372 acres of upland Sonoran Desert with almost five miles of trails. See the little people on the dirt trail to the left? It's Arizona's largest and oldest (founded in 1924) botanical garden.

Every view was worthy of a postcard, and some looked like beautiful paintings. The prickly pear cactuses, like the one below, were bursting into blooms of pink, red, purple and yellow.

The arboretum has collections of desert plants from the United States, Mexico, Australia, Madagascar, India, China, Japan, Israel, South America, the Middle East, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Arabian Peninsula. All told, there are 4,025 taxa and 20,000 plants.

It sure doesn't look like a desert, does it?

The tall orange blooms are aloes.

An iris garden included many colors of flowers.

Walking through the palm oasis was like entering a cathedral with its hushed, cool, filtered light.

And so many big trees for a desert!

The creamy colored blooms above and below are on yuccas, the same as the one I have in my backyard that just started to send out its flower stalk.

These pink prickly pear flowers are about to explode, and so are the orange ones on the barrel cactus.

The founder, copper baron William Boyce Thompson, built an enormous house on top of the rocks overlooking his estate with an elevator taking visitors down to the gardens. I didn't get a good picture of his mansion, but here's a little rock house that was on the property before in became an arboretum and even before Arizona became a state. Now it's used to dry herbs from the nearby herb garden.

And of course there was food involved, but I forgot to get pictures. After lunch outside at a smokehouse/barbecue joint near the arboretum we started the long ride home. That's when one of the ladies -- bless her heart -- mentioned a new ice cream place we'd pass toward the end of the trip! So of course we had to stop there, where we ate our ice cream from Licks at a patio table in a cute little courtyard in Catalina. It was a wonderful day.

Have a colorful day