Atlanta Botanical Garden

I discovered how to get Doug to a botanical garden as a willing participant – trolls!

The Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG) has an exhibition of Thomas Dambo trolls through September 17^th, so we decided to visit with our limited time in the area. The exhibit has six folklore-inspired sculptures of trolls ranging in size from 15 to 25 feet tall, all made from reclaimed materials. The traveling exhibition is called Trolls: Save the Humans.

Sofus Lotus, “a listener who pays great attention to the little things”.

I was also excited about the Dale Chihuly collection, as I just love his work, and find it so interesting to see how hard glass can co-exist beautifully in a natural setting. But the ABG had something I never heard of before – Chihuly paintings! Well, ABG describes them as “acrylic drawings”, but then goes on to describe them as using “paint, ink, and a variety of other media”, and they certainly look like paintings, so I’m going with it. There are six of them hanging in the restaurant on site.

Chihuly’s 30-foot tall Radiant Yellow Icicle Tower.

The *Nepenthes Chandelier* by Dale Chihuly in the visitor’s center.

The setting featuring Chihuly’s *Parterre Fountain Installation*.

*Parterre Fountain Installation* close-up view.

I keep promising myself I won’t overdo the pictures at botanical gardens – I mean, there’s only so many flower pictures we need, but in spite of our rush through (Doug gave me less than 1.5 hours to get through!), I still managed to come away with more than 150 pictures. Sigh.

The ABG sits on 30 acres and dates back to 1976; it shows up on “best in U.S.” lists, and I’d definitely agree (based on our limited experience so far). It has really spectacular gardens and decorative constructions throughout.

There’s a 600-foot canopy walk, an orchid house with the largest collection in the U.S. (that was terrific!), a large conservatory (also quite impressive), and several smaller themed gardens.