Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park (no pics)

Last Thursday my SO and I took a day trip to Grand Rapids, MI, to see at least part of ArtPrize 2017. Since the temperatures were predicted to be above 90 degrees, we wisely limited ourselves to two venues (out of 182!), the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. In the latter, we further limited ourselves to the art (which gratefully was inside), the Japanese garden, and the sculpture garden.

After attending the 2016 Garden Bloggers Fling, I wrote a post on the definition of a Japanese garden. Of course, this one had all the elements. While circumnavigating the pond, we felt the garden was not very large, but once we climbed to a high spot, we saw we were wrong. My favorite part was the Zen dry rock garden - boulders surrounded by raked gravel. A docent explained that they used gravel instead of sand so that the form would withstand heavy rains. The raking pattern resembles a pond, which is calming, as opposed to something like a river.

The sculpture collection at the garden is inside and out. Some of the outdoor ones are HUGE. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the battery on my SO's camera died shortly after we started into the outdoor garden. I took advantage of that occurrence to cut the garden tour short because, OMG, the HEAT!

One jarring note to the gardens was the apparent naming rights that abound. There's the Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory, the Richard and Helen DeVos Japanese Garden, the DeVos Keeler Gift Shop, etc. It made me think I have been taking the wrong approach to funding my gardening efforts. If I could get my (not-so-wealthy) friends and relatives to cough up some bucks, I would happily slap their names on sections of my yard. What do you think?

The Patrick J. McDonnell Silvergrass Island