With ski season skidding to a halt in New Hampshire and reports drifting in of "wet snow," "loose granular," and the dreaded FLG ("frozen loose granular") conditions up there, we're sticking around home more on the the weekends. Yesterday I decided to check out the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center on Elmwood Avenue in Providence.Opened just a year ago and billed as "the largest indoor garden in New England," the center is far more modest in scale than original visions called for, back in those heady economic times when the expansion of the old Smith Greenhouses in the park was first floated.
Basically, the Center is three large greenhouse garden rooms planted with tropicals and exotics arranged attractively around fountains, walkways, pools and stonework arches. There's a rock pond full of brilliant orange carp, and special displays are devoted to carnivorous plants and orchids. Admission is $3.
As soon as you enter, your glasses fog up to let you know you've entered a different climatic zone, one that's warm, green, and humid, with no FLG in sight.
Yesterday, dozens of members of two photography clubs were busy setting up tripods and cameras to practice their technique. A bunch of the guys were hoping to catch a Venus Fly Trap or Pitcher Plant in the act of cannibalizing a bug, but it looked to me as if it would be a long wait for an action shot like that.
If you like indoor gardens, check out two of the best in New England: The Lyman Estate Greenhouses in Waltham, Mass. and the indoor courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
