Our visit to Oxen Pond Botanical Gardens

When we were in St. John's, Nadine and I took a few hours one afternoon to visit Memorial University of Newfoundland's Botanical Gardens, a.k.a. Oxen Pond Botanical Gardens by locals. After a shorter browse than I would have liked (grin) around the gift shop, and a quick glance around the indoor gallery, we ventured outside and walked some of the trails.

The gardens, on the edge of a dense boreal forrest, with poor, rocky soil, surrounded by peat bogs and fens are a delightful surprise in the midst of the city. The first garden we visited was a collection of plants used for medicinal purposes.

We continued on, snapping pictures of Newfoundland wildflowers that peppered the bogs and fens.

There were three trails of increasing intensity. The second trail took us to the duck pond where we fed the ducks with feed we had bought at the gift shop. There were only two ducks in sight when we opened the feed, but right away we heard the honks approach from the surrounding reeds and within minutes there were over twenty ducks at pond's edge waiting to be fed.




The third trail took us to a lookout with an incredible view of St. John's.



Of course, by that time, with the temperatures in the high 20'sC, I was poofed!

Thankfully, the trail was mostly downhill from there. We continued on to browse the greenhouse and more gardens.

These random pictures from the many we took that day, cannot begin to capture how beautiful, lush, colourful and breathtaking the garden was. As I stood there in the garden, I imagined myself in the Garden of Eden and pondered aloud to Nadine what it must have been like. We were amongst the finest collection of plants and trees in the Atlantic Provinces all growing in a natural setting. There were many different species of trees. I thought about the tree of life.

It made me homesick for heaven!