Dangerous for a quilter, anyway! There are far too many textures and interesting shapes.  One could almost say that Pat and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

There have been botanical gardens in Copenhagen since the 1600’s. In the current location, the garden’s main conservatory is set up as a series of glasshouses which date back to 1874. The palm house in the middle is a large circle with many paths through it. The upper-level walkway is accessed by spiral staircases, and gives you a birds eye view of the trees from the air. Attached to this building on either side are long houses with smaller circular ones on the other end.  Five different growing climates are represented.

Imagine a cool, rainy day – tramping through the city. We opened a door and find ourselves in the jungle!  Warm, humid (camera lenses fogging up), the smell of green!  So many colours and shapes and patterns as well. We climbed the cast iron staircase, and entered a world of tree tops. Branches reached out as so many angles – so many different shapes of leaves and flowers. Until my lens defogged, I just used my phone to capture what caught my attention.

We were not there as gardeners, although we both love gardening – we were there as quilters, discovering a wide array of unusual lines and quilting patterns, different flowers and leaves. Why put a simple flower with five rounded petals on your quilt when you could use one like thisor this?We wandered down each path, looking downand upBy the time we had finished in the Palm House, our camera batteries were already showing half dead!

The small house on one end had butterflies in it – landing on flowers and leaves, and folding their wings just as we went to take a close-up shot.

All in all, it took us over 2 1/2 hours to wander through the five glass houses. We saw magical flowers that no man could think up –

colours and shapes that excited our imagination –

simple lines that soothed and calmed –

There are other long glass houses set apart as well. The one that we found open was all succulents. We didn’t spend much time there as there was a class of sorts going on, and it just had one narrow pathway. Still, the specimens were quite amazing.  I’ve never really been a cactus person, due probably to stepping in too many of them as a child on the Prairies, but these flowers….. wow!One last look at the great glass houses of the University of Copenhagen botanical GardensAnd then off to see Rosenborg Castle – too late! We had spent too much time in the gardens.  I guess we will just have to visit Copenhagen again.