Hello Hello Hive Gardeners and all Hivians

I do love gardening but since we moved to a flat we have not had a garden, just a shared back lawn with clothes line to hang out your washing so to speak and and at times weed infested front filled with gravel. So gardening has been limited to having house plants.

Growing up in Edinburgh my school was in Inverleith right next door to the Botanical Gardens and I have had an affinity for them ever since.

Today however, we are travelling North and going to explore the Botanical Gardens in Dundee or more precisely the University of Dundee Botanic Garden which is run by the University with the aid of volunteers.

Admission is £5 and even though we went in February, it was well worth the five pounds admission fee. I did say it was run with the aid of volunteers, well we had to wake up the elderly gentleman at the front desk to buy our tickets!

It does not matter what time of the year that you visit as there is always something going on that you can see. In fact there was so much to see that this visit shall be split into three posts!

Today being a Wednesday we are going to wander round the grounds outside.

Bet you didn't know that we had elephants in Scotland!

I have only seen African elephants in the wild, not Indian ones.

Talking of India...

One of my favourite Indian spice is curry ...

So let's kick off the outside walking tour with yep you got it a Curry Plant or Helichrysum italicum

They have their herb and spice garden rather appropriately outside the cafe. We did eat there, but I am not going to put any pictures of that in this post as I have a feeling this is going to be well big as it is!

Into the grounds we go, but wait did you see what I saw.

It is a roadworks sign!

Well also there is a traffic cone ... Fluff me if I know what that was about!

One of my favourite trees I was surprised to see as we came in ...

Can you guess the name?

I love the smell of wood.

Apologies for flexing these, but they are not native to the UK so they make me happy seeing them here!

There is something magical when I see pine trees of any sort when they cover the forest floor with pinecones and foilage.

Yes they're Sequoia or Giant Redwoods

One great thing about these gardens is that they do label things well, so that you know what you are looking at!

One thing I loved about this Botanics was the art work outside.

Good grief ...

Yes they had a memorial garden and what a peaceful place to remember your loved one.

Part of the garden was these pieces of art, I will make a separate post on them.

Trees glorious trees, different sizes and shapes!

One good thing about those pieces of art was that they are sponsored by local companies.

This area of Dundee was well to do as you can see by the gorgeous houses overlooking the gardens.

Imagine the view especially in the summer!

One cool thing is that they do have different habitats and have plants and vegetation to suit.

You could of course walk in the heather. One good thing here is there are not snakes in the undergrowth!

Water I have to have my water and they have a few ponds too!

Ruth Ingram is a local artist who painted these fairy doors.

There are quite a few of them and I will include in my art post!

And that gorgeous silver coloured tree!

Oh look the mountain pond is back!

It was February so not hot, but if you do need a breather then sit your bum down and watch the world go by!

They do have some walled areas too, which I shall share in another post as this is getting away from me!

There had been some terrible storms which felled loads of trees.

These were chopped up in various places.

It makes me want to get a fire going!

Speaking of which, the temp last night dropped to 2 degrees, so much for fluffing Spring!

I have no idea what this is, it does look a eyeball looking at some funky art!

More funky trees that were felled!

They did have a couple of gazebos which would be cool in the summer!