Field Trip: Sydney Botanic Garden

It’s officially the dead of winter here in the Northeast, and what’s more, there’s a snowstorm capping off the end of our January thaw. Now’s the time all good Yankees hunker down for the worst of it. These photos were just lying around, collecting digital dust, so I figured why not take you on an antipodean trip down memory lane on this very snowy MLK Day?

We paid Australia a visit in 2005, in September, the first month of the austral spring. I was between gardens and had just finished some graduate work in an unrelated field, but my passion for plants is plain to me in these photos. Species here will come as nothing new to West Coast folks — and indeed, anyone fond of succulents, tropicals and palms — but to me, they’re still the coolest. Plus they’ve got this opera house…