Vibrant Colours

Some of the flowers of the Botanic Gardens, were so vibrantly coloured, you wondered if they could be real. The most startling of these had to be the Mecanopsis or Blue Poppy.

With a little sun on them, their bright blue petals seemed almost to be made of coloured tissue paper.

Some of the Primulas formed brightly coloured swathes of blooms in the damp ground close to the water courses of the garden.

Of course, the Rhododendrons and Azaleas provided plenty of colour too. This peachy-pink one was especially gorgeous.

Back inside the glasshouses and the flowers were every bit as vibrant and in some cases, even more so than those out in the open air. Here, an extraordinarily bright red Passiflora (Passiflora vitifolia), a native of Hawaii and Central and South America, easily caught the eye.

As always, some of the best colour came from the myriad different species of Ginger plant. Striking not only for their colour, but also the different ways the flowers are borne on the plants. Some rather conventionally open at the end of the stems, held above the leaves...

Others seem to open from swollen roots or underground stems...

bursting from the ground at the bottom of the plant.

But all of them exquisitely colourful and exotic.