Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, Vol. 11.42: Color Me Wowed!

12/9/2012 - This year is weirdly warm and the first snow has already melted. But stay tuned.

It's that time of year again in Frostbite Falls (a/k/a St. Paul, MN) when outside color is hard to find. If we look hard enough we can occasionally find an interesting plant that looks good in brown, like these hydrangeas:

But if we're hankering for some real color, we head inside and find it here:

Jump with me over the imaginary orange squiggle for a visit to this precious gemstone of the St. Paul parks system.

"To inspire our public to value the presence of living things in our lives"

So reads the mission statement for the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary.

[F]inished in 1915, [it] was a decades long dream of Frederick Nussbaumer, the Como Park gardener who became St. Paul Park Superintendent in 1890. He had worked as a young man at London's Kew Gardens and remembered well its enormous glass palm house. His determination to build a similar structure at Como Park finally lead to its funding through a city bond issue. Once this "folly" was complete, it became a popular success.

…  Within three years of its opening, the Conservatory had some 77,500 plants and some of the originals still survive. It now maintains over 260 major varieties of plants from six different continents.

Current horticulture manager Tina Dombrowski says that "the 'wow factor' has always been an important guiding principle for the managers of the conservatory." That's one of the many reasons Twin Cities residents have long visited the Conservatory as an escape from our monochromatic (and long) snowy winters.

Stepping out of the cold and into the 64½ foot tall Palm Dome has become a time-honored tradition for hundreds — if not thousands — of school children over the decades:

It's like walking into a tropical forest!

If you step into the south 26 x 100 foot wing, you enter the Sunken Garden room, a favorite place for weddings and the occasional gardener's memorial service.

Care to take a little dip? 

Stepping into the north wing brings you to the North Garden, a room full of edible and useful plants such as aloe, bamboo, bananas, cacao, coffee, figs, mahogany, papaya, etc. IMO, the best part of this wing and the Palm Dome is all the orchids* stuck here and there:

* One thing the Conservatory does not do well is label the plants. Feel feel to jump in with your superior knowledge!

As you walk back out into the Palm Dome, there's a breath-taking display of bromeliads. (DId you know in South America, the most common pollinators of bromeliads are humming birds, bats, butterflies, and moths? Neither did I!): 

The fourth room on the tour is the Fern Room — it's sooooooooo lush:

There's even a waterfall in here!

Then back through the Palm Dome before returning outside into the cold. I always stop at this magical lamppost on the way out. It reminds me of the lamppost in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, only in this place, instead of always winter, it's always summer:

This magical place has gone through a few bumpy years during its lifetime. In 1962, a hail storm smashed many of the windows. The broken windows were replaced with plexiglass that clouded up within a few years and that lead to plants dying from lack of sunlight.

In 1974, the Conservatory was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Yet keeping it in good repair remained a constant battle. Major fund raising led to major renovations done from 1987 to 1992, but the future of the building was always uncertain. (The Conservatory is open every day of the year — and it's free. The park system asks for a donation of $3 for adults and $2 for kids, but it's a donation, not an admission charge, and totally inadequate to keep it running. $$$ for upkeep has to come from somewhere else.)

In 2002, the McNeely family of St. Paul gave the Conservatory a generous $7 million gift in honor of their mother, Marjorie, who was passionate about flowers and gardens and the Conservatory. That gift led to many more improvements and has generated further interest and donations, ensuring it will shine as the "jewel of Como" for years to come.

So — that's where Frostbite Fallians go to be wowed and inspired by living things in the winter. Where do you go?

Source: Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, Vol. 11.42: Color Me Wowed!