Click above for our garden photos from The University of North Carolina in Charlotte!

 

Thu Oanh & Ruth enjoyed our first visit together to see the UNCC Botanical Gardens:

Ralph Van Landingham Glen, living museum of spectacular rhododendron blossoms;

The Susie Harwood Garden, with its ornamental explosion of springtime flowers; and

then The McMillan Greenhouse, with its five major growing environments presenting

unusual and exotic plants, including a conservatory, simulating a tropical rain forest!

 

We came in May to see the peak blooms of the rhododendrons, protected among the

towering trees of Ralph Van Landingham Glen,  a ten acre refuge tucked away on the

The University of North Carolina in Charlotte campus.  Dr. Larry Mellichamp, who is

the Director of UNCC's Botanical Gardens, notes that this is the best spring blooming

he's seen in over 30 years for the rhododendrons and their botanical kinfolk, azaleas.

 

Ruth’s new camera ran out of memory halfway through the first garden we visited.

Unfamiliar with the new camera she and Joe had bought, Ruth didn't realize the

 resolution was at the highest setting (3 or 4 MB)! Thu Oanh was good to go!