A marshmallow world in Cleveland

The Cleveland Botanic Garden

After the symposium in Pittsburgh was finished, very successfully by the sounds of it, we the speakers were free to go our own way.
Despite a fairly serious late season snowstorm that hit the region Saturday afternoon and into the evening, I traveled north the next day to call on the Cleveland Botanic Garden. This conservatory and garden, which is situated just south of the Lake Erie shoreline in Cleveland at the edge of Case Western Reserve and the Museum of Art.
Unfortunately due to the snow, almost 18” of it, the grounds were not open and only a small portion of the entrance garden was accessible. Nonetheless, was in town and was here to see what I could.







Arriving at nearly 3:30 on Sunday afternoon I was surprised to pull into to underground parking lot and see it nearly full.
I understand the Cabin Fever phenomena, however this seemed a bit extreme. Upon entering the lobby and purchasing my ticket, I was asked if I was here for the Orchid sale,” no”, I replied to a quizzical looking face, “OK then, enjoy”.
Obviously the orchid sale is an event. This sell off represents the end of a month long orchid extravaganza; I believe that is the technical term. I was told this by Cynthia Druckenbroad, Head of Horticulture at the garden, a familiar face from a previous experience at CBG. She said it’s the best way to avoid having to take care of them after the show and just before the hectic spring season. Staged in the lobby and Library areas for preview, hopeful buyers were posturing so that they could pounce when the time was right. I had no need for orchids today. I felt confident that US Airways could loose my luggage even without something precious and perishable in it.



I moved on to the glass houses. Several years before the Phipps expansion, Cleveland Botanic underwent an n aggressive capital campaign to build a state of the art glasshouse space to house two major collections of theirs. The bold glass structure is split roughly in half, one side housing the Costa Rican forest collection. Warm and moist, noisy and alive. The latter provided by waterfalls and butterflies as well as tropical birds in the glasshouse.
The second house is devoted to the Madagascar collection, or the spiny forest as it is called in Cleveland. Unfortunately the Madagascar climate is cooler and dry in the winter and as such the plants and therefore the display looks austere and foreboding by comparison. Yet in its own right a wonderful exhibit, complete with Madagascar hissing cockroaches…Yeah.
It was nice to see people in this facility, maybe they were there for the orchids but they were there. Noticing the colors on the banana quits as the fed on the feeders, and the aggressive behavior displayed by the large butterfly against the small birds, again at the feeding station. Perhaps they would be back.


As I left the building, leaving the chaos of the now underway sale, I strolled what I could of the entrance garden, situated atop of the underground parking facility, clever. It was a marshmallow world out in the garden, bright late afternoon sun reflected sharply. In the distance one of Frank Gerhy’s buildings on the campus of Case Western Reserve, added a surreal background to the architecture of the snow laden plants in this green place that is Cleveland’s’ Botanic Garden.