December 7-10, 2017: Art Gallery Prudencia Opens in San Antonio
	November 22-26, 2017: Thanksgiving at Ruckman Haus
	Return to the Index for 2017

After Thanksgiving, Guy came up to Dallas for a visit with us, and he stayed for a few days. His purpose in coming for a visit was two-fold. First, he just wanted to get away from San Antonio and relax, and, second, he wanted to bring me a birthday gift. We had a symphony that weekend, so we took Guy to it, and we also made a trip over to the Dallas Arboretum.

My Birthday Gift

Guy has been in the Florida condo numerous times, and he picked up on my liking of abstract art pieces with a musical theme. While he was in Connecticut he found a print with the same theme for my birthday.

My Birthday Gift from Guy

The birthday gift was a surprise, and Guy had me open it as we relaxed after the symphony.

I like the work very much, and it now has a place in the front stairs.

On Saturday, the three of us went over to the Dallas Arboretum, a favorite stop, to have a look at the Christmas Carousels.

Getting to the Dallas Arboretum

The Dallas Arboretum is not too far from where I live over on Inwood- I'd guess about six or seven miles as the crow flies (see the map opposite)- but you can't get there as the crow flies because White Rock Lake is in the way. So you can either go through town and wind your way around the south end of the lake or you can take Mockingbird over around the north side of the lake. When Fred and I go there from the house, as we are doing with Guy today, the northern route is most direct.

In this closer view, you can see the south end of White Rock Lake and you can pick out the bike trail that hugs the lake shore almost all the way around. At the south end is White Rock Lake Dam and spillway, which takes the overflow water and sends it under Garland Road to continue on down to the Trinity River.

The bike path used to cross the top of the dam, but for one reason or another, the bike path was rerouted some years ago, and now it goes through some parkland and playing fields south of the dam, across the spillway, up Garland Road for a ways, and then back north along the lake shore.

You can also see a closer view of the Arboretum in this picture, and can begin to pick out some of the pathways through the gardens.

Finally, in this close-up of the Arboretum itself, you can see most of the major features- including the parking area just off Garland Road, the new administrative buildings, the restaurant and gift shop (all right near the parking lot) and, off in the middle of the gardens, the DeGolyer house (the former residence of the family that donated the land for the Arboretum to the Arboretum Society).

You can also see the maze of pathways that criss-cross the gardens.

The three of us actually took Mockingbird Lane all the way across town and across the bridge at the top of White Rock Lake to Buckner Boulevard, which we took south to Gaston Avenue. Then we came back southwest to the main Arboretum entrance. We usually make a circular transit of the entire Arboretum each time we visit, and we will do that today. We'll start out by going across the north side of the gardens and back to the Lay Family Garden. We will probably just walk with Guy to the entrance to the Rory Meyers Children's Garden but not go in. Then, we'll return to the entry along the Paseo de Flores.

So you can follow us on our tour through the Gardens, I'll use the diagram of the Arboretum that is on their website (although I've simplified it a bit by removing a lot of markers for places not important to our visit today. On this diagram, I'll mark the places we visited, which were:

 1. Bingham Overlook
 2. Potager Display Gardens
 3. Simmons Lagoon
 4. Palmer Fern Dell
 5. Jonsson Color Garden
 6. A Woman's Garden
 7. Orchid Hollow
 8. McCasland Sunken Garden
and the Paseo de Flores

We didn't take pictures in all the gardens, but for those where we did, there will be a little section below.

When we arrived at the Arboretum, we discovered that the garden personnel had already installed many of the Arboretum's Christmas Carousels. There are twelve of them, corresponding with the Twelve Days of Christmas. We have seen them before, and elsewhere in this photo album there is a page for a complete tour of all of them- along with movies and the details of each. Today, we will see most of them, but I didn't try to do another exhaustive review.

The Barbara and Bob Bigham Scenic Overlook (1)

The Arboretum has created this year an entirely new section northwest of the Trammell Crow Entry Plaza. It has been under construction for over a year, and this is the first time we have visited it, as it opened at the end of the summer. There are four components here, and I want to show them all to you in a panoramic view. The view below was created from four separate images (which is why the middle building, the Charlotte and Donald Test Pavilion is a bit misshapen).

Rodriguez Gazebo                          Charlotte and Donald Test Pavilion                                  Bigham Scenic Overlook A Tasteful Place Gardens

The Rodriguez Gazebo is actually the former Arboretum Cafe, which has been part of the entry plaza for a very long time. But the new section encompasses the overlook, the test pavilion, the vegetable and herb gardens, and, behind me as I took this panorama, the Three Sisters Lagoon Overlook and Margaret and Jay Simmons Lagoon.

The Barbara and Bob Bigham Scenic Overlook

Created out of a million-dollar gift by Dallas residents Barbara and Bob Bigham, the overlook- two curved structures enclosing a circular lawn- is billed as the perfect location for weddings, wine tastings, seated dinners and picnics. The lawn overlooks downtown Dallas and White Rock Lake. Here is a movie of the overlook (although you won't see the lake as the sun is right behind me):

At the Bigham Overlook (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

The Bighams offered the gift to the Arboretum as Barbara attributed her recovery from cancer in part to her frequent, long walks through the Dallas Arboretum, and particularly her stops elsewhere in the gardens to sit and look out over the lake. Here are two more views of the structures at the overlook:

Potager Display Gardens (2)

The potager display gardens are four individual quadrants comprising an ornamental kitchen garden, or “potager,” as it is called by the French, which is a productive working garden that is also visually beautiful, drawing on European gardening principals (sic) and artful arrangement. The potager gardens are a signature element of the "Tasteful Place" development with in-season vegetables, herbs and flowers, planted ornamentally and interspersed with flowers to attract pollinators and beneficial insects. The garden was donated by dallas socialite Catherine Corrigan in honor of her mother, Marilyn R. Corrigan. Here are Fred and Guy in the gardens:

An interesting feature of "A Tasteful Place" is the Ruthie Pack Tasting Plaza, an open pavilion where there are daily tastings of seasonal produce. The tasting plaza also has nice views looking out across White Rock Lake.

(I was curious about the tastings, as I thought that the volume of food they must use in a day would probably exceed the small amount of produce that the potager garden would generate, so I took a look back behind the tasting plaza's back wall and saw some boxes of produce, so it's pretty obvious that it's not grown right in the potager garden.)  

The Simmons Lagoon (3)

The Margaret and Jay Simmons Lagoon is a signature feature of the new "A Tasteful Place" section of the Dallas Arboretum, and it provides a feature that, up until now, the Arboretum has lacked- an actual pond.

The Margaret and Jay Simmons Lagoon

The best way to appreciate the beauty of the lagoon is to watch my movie of it:

The Simmons Lagoon and A Tasteful Place (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

Covering more than an acre, the lagoon sits just below the main garden. The center features a beautiful, lighted fountain that changes shape and pattern. I also put together a panoramic view of the lagoon:

The Margaret and Jay Simmons Lagoon

The edges of the lagoon are surrounded by large boulders and lush lawns. A bridge crosses a cascading stream that pours into the lagoon. Meandering walkways with numerous seating areas allow visitors to enjoy the ambience and beauty of this new garden. These walkways also, apparently, offer numerous venues for portrait photographs. The new cascade and bridge have been very well-done, and they rival the stream that flows down through the Nancy Rudchik Red Maple Rill (that you've undoubtedly seen before in these pages). Fred took a picture of Guy and I on the bridge, and below are Guy and Fred on the bridge, and a movie I made of the cascade:

Guy and Fred on the Cascade Bridge

The New Cascade Into the Simmons Lagoon (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

You can see another nice picture that Fred took of me with the entire A Tasteful Place section of the Arboretum gardens in the background if you click here.

Palmer Fern Dell (4)

Nestled between the new "A Tasteful Place" area and the Jonsson Color Garden is the Palmer Fern Dell, where more than 90 varieties of ferns, camellias, azaleas and mature trees border a peaceful brook, which winds throughout this enchanting mini-garden (and, incidentally, feeds the cascade down into the Simmons Lagoon). Actually, from the bridge next to the Simmons Lagoon, you can look up the cascade to see the bridge at the bottom of the Fern Dell.

The Palmer Fern Dell was designed by Naud Burnett II, a famous regional landscape designer, and while the dell is always a pleasant place to walk, it is best in the summer months due to the micro-fine mist system that regularly envelops the garden.

Jonsson Color Garden (5)

The 6.5-acre Margaret Elisabeth Jonsson Color Garden, designed by Naud Burnett II, features large, sweeping lawns and flower beds that are full of seasonal plants.

Guy and Fred at the Jonsson Color Garden

The Jonsson Color Garden features three sections divided by walkways with another walkway surrounding the entire garden. The Color Garden is home to more than 2,000 varieties of azaleas; these border the Color Garden on the north and south and bloom lavishly in the spring (of course now, at the end of November, they aren't blooming). Along the interior side of the walkway are seasonal plantings such as daffodils and tulips in the spring, a vibrant display of bananas and tapioca plants in the summer, brightly colored chrysanthemums in the fall.

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

There used to be just one entrance at the west end of the color garden- the bridge at the bottom of the Fern Dell that led down from the entry plaza. But now, with the addition of "A Tasteful Place", there are two entrances, the second one being from that new area of course, the one leading over the new cascade. The color garden has numerous entrances on the south (from the Paseo de Flores) as well as on the east, from and to A Womans Garden.

There is one interior garden called the Waterwise display, donated by Region IV of the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. It provides a location for home gardeners to learn how to install and manage a low-water landscape.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

We are here in the Arboretum today just a few days after the installation of the traditional twelve Christmas carousels that the gardens always install for the Christmas season. You may have seen them before, especially on the page for our visit to the Arboretum with Prudence, Ron, Nancy, Karl, and Guy during their display in 2014.

12/12 11/12 10/12 9/12 8/12 7/12 6/12 5/12 4/12 3/12 2/12 1/12 < >

Today, I just took pictures of each carousel, and I have put them in the slideshow at left. There are 12 carousels, of course, and you can flip through all of them using the little arrows in the lower corners of each picture. The index numbers in the upper left (as well as the number on the carousel itself) will tell you where you are.

In case you may have forgotten, here are the lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" so you will know what each carousel contains (and the carousels begin with the twelfth day so they match the lyrics):

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me

            Twelve drummers drumming
            Eleven pipers piping
            Ten lords a-leaping
            Nine ladies dancing
            Eight maids a-milking
            Seven swans a-swimming
            Six geese a-laying

            Five golden rings

            Four calling birds
            Three french hens
            Two turtle doves, and

            A partridge in a pear tree

Incidentally, if you would like to see the page with the complete descriptions of each carousel as well as a movie of each one, click the link below and I will open that album page for you in a new tab. Please be patient and let that page load; there are so many pictures and movies on it that it may take a moment. Then just scroll down to the section: "The Gazebo Carousels".

A Woman's Garden (6)

A Woman's Garden is a gift from the Women’s Council of the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. This serene and nationally acclaimed Dallas garden features terraced walkways and exceptional views.

Sculpture at the Reflecting Pool

Phase 1 of this 1.8-acre formal garden was designed in 1997 by landscape architect Morgan Wheelock. A Woman’s Garden is comprised of several smaller outdoor garden "rooms" including the Pecan Parterre and the Poetry Garden which features a sunken garden of roses. The Majestic Allee where visitors can view White Rock Lake just beyond a dramatic reflecting pool.

A Carousel in the Woman's Garden

Phase 2, which opened to the public in the spring of 2006, was designed by designed by Morgan Wheelock and executed by Warren Johnson. It boasts alluring features such as a native Texas limestone bridge, a 140-foot hanging garden, and a wellspring surrounded by towering Dawn Redwoods. These two beautiful gardens were designed to celebrate the strength, courage, creativity and nurturing demeanor of women.

The center of A Woman's Garden is a series of long, thin pools with grass in the center. For the display of the Christmas carousels, a large part of this central area was covered by boards and one of the carousels installed on top of them. In the picture at right, we are looking down into the garden from the entrance at the east end of the Jonsson Color Garden.

Orchid Hollow (7)

From A Woman's Garden, we walked along a pathway by the lake to reach Orchid Hollow where there is a neat water feature. Then it was up a curving walkway to the McCasland Sunken Garden. Part of that water feature is a serpentine aqueduct that feeds it.

This is the water feature in Orchid Hollow.

Here is Guy on the curving walkway up from Orchid Hollow to the McCasland Sunken Garden.

The McCasland Sunken Garden (8)

The 2006 contribution of Tom and Phyllis McCasland, the McCasland Sunken Garden, is evidence of their commitment to the continued expansion of the Arboretum. The garden, designed by Warren Johnson, has a central aisle, lined with Italian jardinières, which leads down a series of steps towards a sunlit grass court surrounded by seasonal plantings.

At the top of the garden, there are stairs leading down to a water feature and a bronze. The Chico y Chica de la Playa sculpture and accompanying fountain provide a tranquil setting for the many weddings that take place in this secluded garden. At the east end of the garden are steps up towards the Seay Magnolia Glade.

Fred and Guy at the East End of the Sunken Garden

Guy at the Top of the Steps from the Sunken Garden

Next to the Sunken Garden is the Seay Magnolia Glade, and just to the northeast of both of them is the Nancy Rudchik Red Maple Rill. We walked through both of these today, but took no pictures. At the confluence of the three gardens is a pretty, secluded fountain.

The Fountain at the Confluence of Three Gardens

Along with her husband Austin, friend of thee Arboretum Pauline Neuhoff wanted to dedicate a quiet and special garden to honor her mother, and the beautiful Nancy Clements Seay Magnolia Glade was the result. The garden features lush green grass, beautiful white blooms and the peaceful sounds of running water in a long, meandering narrow stream. At the east end of the allee there is one more circular fountain and an archway that leads through to the Nancy Rudchik Red Maple Rill.

The Nancy Rutchik Red Maple Rill opened five years ago, and quickly became one of our favorite stops on our visits to the Arboretum. This two-acre garden features a stream and a collection of over 80 varieties of signature Japanese Maples planted along it. Today, we walked down to the picturesque bridge that crosses the Rill's stream; the stream is so well done that it appears quite natural.

This premier addition to the Arboretum was designed by Rowland Jackson. Key design elements of the Nancy Rutchik Red Maple Rill include a new entry off the Paseo de Flores and a large gathering plaza that overlooks a re-circulating creek and numerous waterfalls. Opened in fall 2011, this charming area also includes a series of paved walkways and a stone bridge connecting the Martin Rutchik Concert Stage and the Performance Lawn to the Magnolia Allee. An especially large weeping Japanese maple, nearly 100 years old, anchors the center of the garden.

Along the Paseo de Flores

From the Red Maple Rill, we came back out onto the Paseo de Flores near the Alex Camp House. In front of that building, in the middle of a circular walkway, there is another fountain, and we walked over to see it.

As we walked along the Paseo from the Alex Camp House back towards the Arboretum entrance, we made a side trip down the Crepe Myrtle Allee to Toad Corners, and we also stopped by the various test beds and test gardens that are on the south side of the Paseo. We also went right past the Arboretum's Christmas tree.

We took a number of pictures along the Paseo, from the Camp House back to the entry of a few sights (some quirky, some just interesting), and we'll close this page with those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

We enjoyed Guy's visit to Dallas, and of course today's walk through the Arboretum.

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

	December 7-10, 2017: Art Gallery Prudencia Opens in San Antonio
	November 22-26, 2017: Thanksgiving at Ruckman Haus
	Return to the Index for 2017