Travel: Muttart Conservatory

Last week I shared our visit to the Alberta Legislature Building – doing some travelling in our own town (well, about 45 minutes away). This weekend I’m sharing a little visit we had to Edmonton’s delightful conservatory – the Muttart Conservatory. Four beautiful pyramids, each a different climate: arid, temperate, tropical and then a feature pyramid.

Muttart Conservatory

First, admission is fairly reasonable. It’s $12.50 per adult, yet when I went with my dad and step-mom the lady at the desk was so kind she rang us in as a family. She asked if I had CAA and I said “I don’t, but I’ll ask my dad” – to which she responded, “oh, I’ll ring you in as a family.” Score – a family admission is $37.00 and we saved 10% with my dad’s CAA membership, so $33.30.

Okay, on to the plants!

Best time to visit is when it’s bright and sunny out. The pyramids let in so much light and the plants simply look amazing in the bright sunshine.

Here’s the arid climate. We took a tour and although it was very informative, my step-mom nailed it by saying it’s like our tour guide was giving her grade 8 oral. Yup, that’s it.

It was special to see this plant – only flowers every 37 (I think 37) years. So neat!

The elephant foot trees – simply the coolest.

Temperate pyramid is full of all sorts of plants that we’re used to seeing here in Canada. Smells like home.

The feature pyramid changes about 8 times a year, so I’m thinking each feature is 6 weeks long – then a few days for change over in between? When we visited it was the tail end of the Canada 150 feature. A lot of red and white plants. These bright beauties were my favourite from that pyramid.