Mitchell Park Domes 2019

April can be a cruel month around here. While meteorologically speaking it’s said to be spring, the usual April weather in southeast Wisconsin is gray, cloudy, and cool. It can even snow in April. For example, we got four inches of snow on Palm Sunday, just a week ago. Sunny, warm days are hard to come by. We usually can’t put the jackets away until the latter part of May.

To combat the prolonged misery of a Wisconsin winter and elusive “spring,” it helps to go someplace where nature’s beauty can be found and is on display. One such place is the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory in Milwaukee. It’s an indoor botanical garden known to locals as The Domes. The building consists of three large glass domes. Each dome showcases a different type of climate and vegetation. The three domes are the Arid (Desert) Dome, the Tropical Dome, and the Show Dome.

During my visit on the Monday after Easter, the Show Dome featured a new exhibit entitled Japanese Zen Garden. In the gallery below, I present a collection of photos from my recent visit. Seeing this type of colorful beauty, compared to the still-dormant vegetation outdoors, is food for the soul. And great subject matter for any photographer.