I just got back from visiting family up un Maryland. While I was up there I visited the Brookside botanical garden for the first time and loved their japanese tea house garden so much that I have to share some of the pictures with all of you. I was also suprised by just how many tropical plants they had growing outside. At times it was hard to remember that I wasn't in florida.

Here's the japanese tea house from a distance. It sits on a little island in the middle of a man made pond.

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This is one of the paths that crosses over a narrow portion of the pond and leads up to the tea house.

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This is another path leading up to the tea house. When the water level in the pond is higher water passes through the large gap that's in the middle of the path (maryland seems to be suffering from a drought, too). I love how they used stone throughout the gardens. Of course, most of the stone was probably already at the site when the gardens were created.



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This is another stone path that crosses a different pond leading up to a little memorial garden dedicated to the people that were killed by the snipers in the Washington D.C./Baltimore area a few years ago.



This is in the memorial garden.



Here's a small wooden bridge crossing over a dry stream bed.



Here's the tea house from a different angle.



I was disappointed that more trees weren't turning red since maryland has been having an unusually warm fall. But I did get to see a few trees that were covered in bright red leaves like this japanese maple. There were quite a few large japanese maples scattered around the gardens.

The link leads to more pictures that I took at the gardens as well as some from other places I visited during my vacation. I'm still adding photos to the album.

Here is a link that might be useful: Maryland - Brookside Gardens