Life and Death on Display: Midwinter at the Missouri Botanical Garden

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”  – John Muir

As I write this, St. Louis is in the midst of a winter snowfall that could leave somewhere between 6-12 inches of snow on the ground. It’s beautiful and all that, but I’m not amused.

Just a week ago, I spent several hours of an unseasonably warm day walking the grounds of one of our region’s storied treasures — the Missouri Botanical Garden, better and forever known to long-time St. Louisans as Shaw’s Garden. Named for the merchant and botanical enthusiast Henry Shaw, an Englishman who came to St. Louis in 1819 as an 18-year-old in search of customers for his hardware and cutlery business on the edge of the American wilderness, the “Garden” is today world renowned for its botanical richness and beauty, its architecture and the botanical knowledge its scientists continue to uncover on the grounds and at sites throughout the world.

At their most mundane, in my humble opinion, botanical gardens can be merely sculptured collections of rare and exotic plants that only the very wealthy or the very talented could ever dream cultivate. Shaw had other ideas. At their very best, they are inspiring places that showcase the continuing natural (and beautiful) cycles of life and death, regardless of the colors of our thumbs. Even (or perhaps especially) in the depths of winter those cycles of ascetic wonder continue to be on display if we take the time to look.

Obviously, this is not prime time for the Garden. The flower beds lie barren, its famous water lilies absent. Its educational vegetable gardens await the planting of spring, the flowering of summer and the harvest of fall. The crowds are mostly at home watching football. And yet, Saturday’s warm weather brought out many like me, happy to see the sun and take a walk within the hopefulness that is a garden in winter.

Below are a few photos from my clockwise stroll through Shaw’s gift to St. Louis, beginning at “6 o’clock” at the visitors center and the Linnean House and continuing around the dial to the reflecting pools in front of the Climatron, the austere winter beauty of the Japanese Garden, the simple and inspirational Carver Garden, and back around to the front via the miracle of the Climatron, a modern structure that has captured my imagination since childhood. Enjoy or, better yet, go visit yourself. Click on the photos to see larger versions.