We visited the US Botanic Garden’s annual “Season’s Greenings” exhibition titled “Roadside Attractions” featuring plant-based recreations of iconic sights from across the United States, with G gauge model trains chugging around, below, through and above the displays. We also toured the Garden Court with its National Mall buildings and monuments, also all created from more than 70 plant-based materials. I had photographed the Washington exhibit at last year’s show, but found that I missed some of them and also saw that some are a bit different this time around. This year’s display was also very cleverly set up, with many of the roadside attractions spread throughout the conservatory, encouraging people to tour the entire building and not just the room containing the model trains.
This representation of the US Capitol took more than 600 hours to create and was made primarily with plant materials. For example, the dome was fashioned using sycamore leaves, willow sticks, seagrass twine, wheat, winged euonymus, fern fronds, kangaroo pods, screw pods, acorns and pine cone scales.
Golden, posted earlier: