Dolomites

We have stayed at such a beautiful hotel these 2 nights that I have to show you before we start our tour of the Dolomites. The grounds of the hotel go right to the beach at Lake Garda. The name of the hotel is Dulac Et Du Parc Grand Resort.

View from my room

Some of the scenery along the way:

We traveled through the Alps for 2 hours to Merano. We came close to Austria and found that more and more people were speaking German instead of Italian.

TRAUTTMANSDORFF GARDENS

This garden has lots of color because of its extensive use of annuals and perennials. The garden is divided up into 80 separate gardens not all of which I saw. This garden is huge; it has about 24 acres and about 33 full time gardeners.

They had a nice display of parasitic plants such as these Sarracenia plants.

The greenhouse has displays of tender plants such as orchids, Pachystachys lutea, Justicia carnea and Acalypha hispida.

The fern garden is planted along a rushing creek with 2 waterfalls. The newest fossil plant, discovered in Australia in 1994, was saved from the forest fires there by dumping water on the last 34 trees in existence.

Flowers are everywhere:Coleus and Impatiens

Iceland Poppy

Oriental Poppy and Allium ‘Globemaster’

Stipa gigantea, Coreopsis and Yarrow

Petunia

Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica)

Wallflower (Erysimum allionii)

700 year old Olive tree

Love Garden

Cactus Garden

Rock Garden – each kind of rock native to Italy is displayed as well as its finished surface.

Fragrant garden: You go through and smell sample fragrances and then, out in front, go test yourself to see how many fragrances you can remember.

Different kinds of homes for bees are shown.

Pond garden

Peony Garden

Citrus garden

Vegetable Garden

Garden chimes garden

Children’s play garden

Italian garden

Calla garden

Pelargonium garden

Water garden

Bird garden

Steep slope garden

This is only 23 of the 80 gardens; I didn’t have enough time to see the whole place. We were there only 2 hours and I walked almost 10,000 steps.

Next: Tyrol Castle

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