Frederick Meijer Gardens- July 29, 2010

Today our Botany Boot-camp group headed to Frederick Meijer Gardens for a class on carnivorous plants. To say Zachary was excited is an understatement! He LOVES learning about these types of plants. He has devoured so much information on the subject I dare say he may be an expert!

Our day started with a tour of the carnivorous plant exhibit. We even got to go back behind the scenes in the greenhouses to where they grow the specimens for the exhibit.

We then headed to a classroom to look more closely at the various carnivorous plants. We learned that a Venus Flytrap really only needs to "eat" 1-2 insects per year to survive.

The highlight for Zach was being able to dissect a Pitcher plant. One of them was full of the lovely remnants of bugs it had eaten.

Finally, we were taken on a tour of the rest of the indoor gardens. The blown glass that was on display amongst the various plants was breathtaking!

The tour concluded our organized time at the gardens however we decided to stay and have lunch and explore the outside a little bit. The boys had fun running around and the adults enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Enjoy the following pictures from our day. You can click on any picture to make it larger.

MSU Children's Garden- July 8, 2010

Today with our Botany group we headed to the Children's Garden at MSU. The gardens feature over 56 themed areas. Zachary's favorite was the dinosaur garden which featured plants that survived the dinosaur era. His favorite was the large Ginko Tree.

My favorite was the Pizza Garden. Which was planted in a pie shape and included ingredients needed to make a pizza. The boys had fun running around the gardens and looking for plants on their scavenger hunt!

Here is Zach scrubbing his teeth with a sage leaf. Miss Jessica, our tour guide told us they make a great substitute

for a tooth brush!

This bee was fun to see since our most recent lessons were on pollination! We learned that a colony of bees decide each day which single kind of flower to collect nectar from and only feed from those plants. This is what enables plants to be pollinated since they can only be pollinated from one of their own kind.

After heading inside to work on a necklace that will sprout a plant we headed outside again to work on some flower paintings.

The kids got to run around the annual flower garden and pick flower heads that they then rubbed on watercolor paper to create a beautiful piece of art.

Although it was raining, the kids didn't mind and it actually made their paintings that much more vibrant. Zachary's favorite flowers were red geraniums and orange marigolds.

We had such a great time today, even though we encountered some rain. The boys could have cared less!

Our next trip is to the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids on July 29th. We will be visiting and learning about carnivorous gardens and plants. Zachary cannot wait!!