I never even realized that there was a United States Botanical Garden until the torture/interrogation scene in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol that takes place in the middle of the jungle room.  I’m not sure what that says about me that I:

  1. Read a scene like that and think “I bet that’s a nice place to visit. “
  2. Never noticed a huge glass building sitting next to the Capitol

There are outside gardens but we were there in July and it was roughly 10,000 degrees outside with no shade so we didn’t look at them.  We headed straight inside.

I wanted to throw myself headlong into this fountain.

I loved this fountain’s tiles. It wasn’t running but it was located in the blessed air conditioning (or maybe it was just cooler inside from all the plants) so that was ok.

It is a typical botanic garden where you move through rooms with different ecosystems or organized by use of plants like the medicinal plants room.

In the Jungle Room. I did consider taking a picture on the bench from The Lost Symbol but decided after much deliberation that I’m not quite that weird yet. Actually, that’s not weird at all but I didn’t want to have to explain it all to the husband.

Orchids are always good for close ups.

Water everywhere kept it much cooler than outside.