Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary

This panorama is from the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, a beautiful public garden just west of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The following description is from this web page at the Public Gardens of Minnesota section of The University of Minnesota Web site:

“This is the oldest public wildflower garden in the United States. In 1907, Eloise Butler and three other botany teachers in Minneapolis asked that a small portion of the then Glenwood Park, now Theodore Wirth Park, be set aside as a "wild" garden. They saw such a garden as a botany laboratory and, farsightedly, hoped its establishment would help protect species native to Minnesota. A 13 acre site surrounding a tamarack bog was selected and preserved with an initial budget of $200. The garden has 2/3 mile of somewhat hilly wood chipped pathways that take visitors not only down to the low, boggy area, but through dappled, ferny woodlands and, also, up into a third habitat featuring upland and prairie plant species. The over 500 different herbaceous and woody plants contained in these three habitats are those initially found on the site augmented by other native species gathered by Butler from the surrounding metropolitan area. Identifying signage on plants with both common and Latin names, is quite plentiful. There are leaflets at the front gate with plant and bird checklists. Naturalist tours and programs are offered on weekends.

Nearby is another interesting site, a hidden, five acre quaking tamarack bog. Access to the bog is on the west side of Theodore Wirth Parkway, a little south of Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. A short hike brings visitors to a floating poly-boardwalk that lets one literally walk on water through close to 200 mature tamaracks that grow in this sphagnum moss filled depression. This bog is the only example of this rare and delicate eco-system in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area.”

Click here to see some nice close up photos of the flowers.

---

---

USA-Canada / USA-Minnesota

Lat: 44° 58' 31.64" N
Long: 94° 20' 15.67" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

I used a Nikon D1x with a 10.5mm lens mounted on a Manfrotto 3021BPRO tripod with a 303sph tripod head. I used some dynamic range blending techniques in Photoshop CS to capture the sun and shadow detail in other areas. Shot at f/22 and with shutter speed bracketing on some shots.

Raw images as always- then Nikon Capture - Stitcher - Photoshop - Cubic Converter - and finally Cubic Connector for rotation.