Our gardens are filled with flowers from around the world. Consider all of the exotic tulips, roses, and lilies, for example. They're beautiful and welcomed additions to our gardens. We embrace them as if we've always known them. Still, there are magnificent flowers from far corners of the world that have yet to make it to our back yards. To see these, we visit arboretums, botanical gardens or other specialized gardens. Hurray that we can.

Here is a sample of the flowers growing at the Botanical Gardens in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and UC Berkeley, and the arboretum at UC Santa Cruz. Many of these flowers are from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They offer dramatic color, intricate shapes and are beautiful beyond description. A shortfall that many have is a general lack of fragrance. That, however, is more than made up by their extravagant beauty.