The Belle Isle Conservatory

I've been outside the Conservatory a number of times but I've never been around when it was open.  Yesterday, I decided that I would go inside.  I'm going to guess it's been about 20 years since I've been on the inside.  If I remember correctly, they have some pretty interesting plants there.

The building itself was built in 1904 and was designed by Albert Kahn and was modelled after Monitcello.

 This is the koi garden that is outside the building.  It looks kind of nice and I think with the snow in places it looks a little nicer and more peaceful.

 The main dome of the building.

 Looking at the building from back a ways.

 Just trying to get a picture without some of the extraneous branches.

 An overall look at the pond.

 Just trying to get a shot of the gate.

 In front of the Conservatory is a fairly nice garden.  This place seems very well maintained compared to some of the other places on Belle Isle.

 Since it is Christmas time, there is a nice tree in the lobby.  I wish I would have spent a little more time taking pictures of some of the ornaments because they were pretty nice.

 It's not particularly big on the inside but there is a pretty nice selection of plants.  Some of them were even flowering which is a nice contrast to the dreary weather outside.

 One of the rooms is dedicated to different ferns.  I'm not about to name any of these as I don't really know.

Since poinsettias are considered as Christmas flowers, they had a bunch of them set up.   It actually looked kind of cool. 

 Some of the cactus flowers. 

 One of the nice things when they have groups of flowers, you get to see the different varieties.  I never realized that there were pink and white poinsettias.

 A shot of the overall display.

 One of the pink poinsettias.

 A nice grouping of this.

 I'm not sure what kind of flower this is but I liked the looks of it.

 I really liked the looks of this flower.

 I wish the shot I took of the main petal wasn't as blurry.

 Another flower that I really like.  I think they have orchids here but I'm not sure which flowers those are.

A shot from across one of the rivers on Belle Isle.  I liked how the building reflected in the water.  As I said, the water was pretty calm yesterday.