2010-6-25 Juneau, Alaska

 In Juneau, we visited a botanical garden in the Tongrass National Forest. It's called the Upside Down Forest of Glacier Gardens. Bill and I are at the entrance in the pictures below.

Here is the guide explaining the planting and history of the garden. It's a privately owned business. 

 

The upside down trees are known as the flower towers. The tops of the trees were buried in the ground. I don't understand why the trees didn't die. In any case, the roots formed a basket up in the air. The basket was filled with netting and mosses to make beds for begonias, fuchsias and petunias. The bedding plants bloom brilliantly and hang down from the overturned trees. 

This is the world's largest temperate rain forest. 

From their website:

The Mendenhall Glacier itself is a rarity, as it is one of the world’s few drive-up glaciers. It lies at the foot of Thunder Mountain, where the Bowhays acquired a large tract of land in 1985 after a landslide demolished much of the face of the mountain, uprooting nearly everything and destroying one of the main streams. Steve, a landscaper by trade, set out to restore the stream and harness its water for a hydroelectricity plant to power new greenhouses. Settling ponds were designed to slow the rate of water erosion and provide a series of waterfalls on the garden property.

Stories have it that while rebuilding the stream, Steve accidentally damaged the moving equipment and, in a fit of frustration, used the machine to pick up a large fallen tree stump and slam it upside-down into the soft mud. The image of roots hanging down like petunia vines apparently gave him the inspiration to repeat his action, inverting over 20 other dead spruce and hemlock trees in order to plant more than 75 flowers in their root bowls each year.

This is a recent picture from their website:

There is a place for gatherings. They offer wedding receptions in the room below. 

The tour took us to see the Mendenhall Glacier but I can't find any photos of it now. The next photo is Bill is standing in front of a famous tavern in Juneau. 

Because of his military service in Kodiak, Bill already knew what to expect of Alaska in the summer. I wanted to experience it for myself. I found the twilight disturbing and had trouble sleeping while we were there. We brought aluminum foil to cover the windows in the stateroom and that helped a little.