Starlight Express Christmas Display at U.S. Botanic Gardens
Today I went to the United States Botanic Gardens to check out the special Christmas display. Once I heard that they had mini D.C. buildings made out of all natural sources I just had to see them. Outside the Botanic Gardens is the Starlight Express train display that is pretty amazing with a lot of different trains running on it over and through mountains as well as across bridges. I noticed several parents had a hard time getting the children to even go inside the Botanic Gardens because the children wanted to keep watching the trains outside.
Inside the Botanic Gardens probably is not as impressive to the kids as the trains outside, but it is still impressive. The inside exhibit includes a Christmas tree with Capital Hill Residential Neighborhood house replicas surrounding the base of the tree and a train going around it. These residences are made out of natural materials such as walnut shells for window frames and lotus pods and branches as architectural details.
There is also a replica of several D.C. buildings laid out relatively the same way they are in relation to each other on a map. The building replicas include the US Botanic Garden, the Library of Congress, the US Supreme Court, Ford’s Theater, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian Castle, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House. All are elaborately detailed, but the highlight is the Capitol building. The Capitol replica includes corn husks in the Statue of Freedom, acorn caps in the architectural details, kangaroo pods in the dome, cinnamon sticks in the windows, willow branches in the columns, and horse chestnut bark in the stairs to just name a few of the plants in the replica.
Christmas, D.C., botanic gardens
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December 22nd, 2007 at 12:05 am
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptToday I went to the United States Botanic Gardens to check out the special Christmas display. Once I heard that they had mini DC buildings made out of all natural sources I just had to see them. Outside the Botanic Gardens is the … [...]
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 am
[...] Starlight Express Christmas Display at US Botanic Gardens [...]
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