When we were in Chicago two weeks ago, one of the things of the things I wanted to do was visit the Chicago Botanic Garden using the reciprocity that comes with our Missouri Botanical Garden membership. I’m so glad we had time to go!

The weather was actually very nice for Chicago in January, but there was still snow on the ground, which made our walk even more fun. Without question, our favorite part of the Garden was the Japanese Garden, Sansho-en. There were two islands we were allowed to visit (a third is visible, but not accessible), and the winding paths were lovely.

The rest of the snow-covered garden was beautiful, too. We saw as much of it as we could with the time we had.

We did eventually get cold (nice or not, it was still January!), so we enjoyed a walk through the greenhouses to warm up:

And we took a look at the bonsai trees  on display in the Regenstein Center. Don’t let their small size fool you…some of them are over 80 years old!

We loved our wintertime visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden, and I’m really hoping we’ll have a chance to go back in the spring.  know there is a lot more water throughout the Garden than it looked like because of all of the snow, and I really want to know how it  looks when you can see it all!