A beautiful public garden with numerous meandering paths by the Pacific Ocean, the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, presents the visitor with blooming flowers and sumptuous ocean views.

A must visit place in any trip to Mendocino in northern California, especially in the summer. I visited the gardens during one such memorable trip and here I am writing down a memoir complemented by a photo essay.

Allow me to fill your screen with flowers – the living poems!

The Memory of Flowers!

When our vision meets a flower, magic ensues. The color of the flower or the fragrance can transport us to so many worlds.

Our mind can quickly take a leap to many years back and we could sit beside the favorite flower pot in our childhood home.

The smell of the rose can make our love-smitten moments alive that were lived decades ago. Perhaps we can conjure a future moment laden with beauty and poetry just like the flowers.

A scope of infinite possibility to dwell in beauty spontaneously. A dynamic event, hard to reproduce or predict.

Today, while walking down a known and habitual lane for my morning walk, I saw spring unfurled in almost every corner, and to my surprise, a completely unpredicted event happened.

A few blooming flowers whisked my mind away to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg.

The Memory of Flowers! #California #Travel #RoadTrip Click To Tweet A beautiful public garden with numerous meandering paths by the Pacific Ocean in northern California #Travel #Explore #Wanderlust Click To Tweet

When our vision meets a flower, magic ensues. The color of the flower or the fragrance can transport us to so many worlds. #Flowers #Mendocino #VisitCalifornia Click To Tweet Allow me to fill your screen with flowers – the living poems!#Flowers #Mendocino #VisitCalifornia #Naturelovers Click To Tweet
 

Beautiful white flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

Whenever I see white flowers, I remember the Rajanigandha, Tuberose in English. This sweet-smelling flower is used extensively in West Bengal, India, where I grew up, for both happy and sad occasions.

I remember tieing it on my hair before my dance performances. Interestingly, while researching on this flower, I found out this is native to Mexico. How I pine for the smell!

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine to the mind.

Luther Burbank
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, White Flowers, Travel Realizations

Deep in your wounds are seeds, waiting to grow beautiful flowers.

Niti Majethia
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, White Flowers, Travel Realizations

The flowers danced, knowing that they will die.

 Ethen Strine
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, White Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

Beautiful yellow flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

I love the colors yellow and orange – my favorite shades. If you ask me about my memory related to yellow flowers then I will name Marigold or Tagetes.

This flower has a lovely smell too. Decades before, during my childhood, every morning after waking up, I saw these flowers in my neighbor’s roof which I could see from my room.

I remember jethima ( elder aunt) watering the plant. Jethima is no more but those days are still vivid in my memory.

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.  

Henry Ward Beecher
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Buddha
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations

To bloom is to become.

Gina kleiser
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations

Flowers have the greatest talent in converting an ordinary place into a magical palace.

Mehmet Murat ildan
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations

Flowers are the Romeos and the Juliets of the nature!

Mehmet Murat ildan
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations

Even though the bee is small, there she is on the flower, doing something of value. And the value she creates there contributes to a larger ecosystem of value, in that mountain meadow, in that range of mountains, in the world and even the universe. And can’t you just feel how happy she is? 

Jay Ebben
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, yellow Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

Beautiful pink flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

Lotus comes invariably in my mind, whenever someone says a pink flower. Lotus is the national flower of both India and Vietnam.

Lotus is extensively used during the puja or prayers in India. But my memory transports me to the Howrah Botanical Garden, which has the famous 250-year-old great banyan tree.

I used to visit this beautiful garden with my late grandfather who showed me the beautiful lotus flowers floating on their big round leaves in a pond.

While writing, for a split second I went back to those days of my childhood and found out how starkly different it was from my adult life here in California.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us .

Iris Murdoch
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, pink Flowers, Travel Realizations

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, pink Flowers, Travel Realizations

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.

Beverly Nichols
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, pink Flowers, Travel Realizations

Flowers are the music of the ground. From earth’s lips spoken without sound.

Edwin Curran
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, pink Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

 

Beautiful purple flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

Beautiful Bougainvillea fills my mind if you ask me about a purple flower. A few large trunks of this tree always crossed the boundary of my neighbor’s house and ours.

Very early in my life, I realized nature knows not any borders!

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!”

Isaac Watts
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, purple Flowers, Travel Realizations

Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.

John Keats
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, purple Flowers, Travel Realizations

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him

Auguste Rodin
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, purple Flowers, Travel Realizations

Flowers are those little colorful beacons of the sun from which we get sunshine when dark, somber skies blanket our thoughts

Dodinsky
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, purple Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

Beautiful blue flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

While writing this blog post, I can feel the relaxing therapy it is doing to me. My memory is going back and forth in search of flowers.

Flowers that I have seen while growing up and the flowers I see here in California are different but carry the same message.

And that is BEAUTY! Now back to a blue flower memory. My favorite is the blue butterfly pea or Clitoria Ternatea.

Every Saturday evening my maternal grandmom used to organize a special puja where blue butterfly pea flowers were mandatory.

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

Jeremy Bentham
Flowers that I have seen while growing up and the flowers I see here in California are different but carry the same message. And that is BEAUTY!#Flowers #Mendocino #VisitCalifornia Click To Tweet
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, blue Flowers, Travel Realizations

Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together, drawing them from their homes.

Clare Ansberry
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, blue Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

Beautiful red flowers in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens!

The memory of two garlands of red roses during our engagement came floating by!

The real wealth of a good gardener is not his salary, but the marvelous flowers he is raising in the garden!

Mehmet Murat ildan
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, red Flowers, Travel Realizations

A flower’s appeal is in its contradictions — so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect.

Terri Guillemets
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, red Flowers, Travel Realizations

How can one help shivering with delight when one’s hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor!

Colette
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, red Flowers, Travel Realizations

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

Oscar Wilde
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, red Flowers, Travel Realizations
 

 

Some beautiful corners in Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

This garden in Mendocino has flowers, greenery, and soothing sea-breeze.

Beauty surrounded us in every corner. If you are visiting Mendocino or Fort Bragg in northern California, then this garden is unmissable.

This garden in Mendocino has flowers, greenery, and soothing sea-breeze. Beauty surrounded us in every corner. #Flowers #Garden #Travel #Mendocino #VisitCalifornia Click To Tweet
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations

While exploring this garden full of flowers, I felt joy. The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can trigger in us is bliss!

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations
While exploring this garden full of flowers, I felt joy. The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can trigger in us is bliss! #Naturelovers #Travel #VisitCalifornia Click To Tweet

A practical tip – Spend at least half a day in this garden whenever you plan to visit. 💖

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations

Whenever I see such flower gates, I swiftly escape to a secret world of mine. A world where peace defeats profit and the slow pace is the norm. People in this secret world of mine, celebrate flowers every day.

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations
Whenever I see such flower gates, I swiftly escape to a secret world of mine. A world where peace defeats profit and the slow pace is the norm.#Travel #Flowers #Naturelovers Click To Tweet

My three-year-old daughter was lost in the sea of beauty. The way she saw beauty in every detail, was a lesson for me.

It’s about the attention that we pay. In this world of distractions, perhaps flowers are the best alternative.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

Audrey Hepburn
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations, Chirantana, a small baby
In this world of distractions, perhaps flowers are the best alternative.#Travel #Naturelovers #wanderlust Click To Tweet
 

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens - A Photo Essay, Travel Realizations
When the rhythm of our daily life breaks by some unexpected reality, flowers, poems, birds, and love give us back our missed dimensions to which we escape; a precious relief for sure.#Flowers #Naturelovers #Mendocino #VisitCalifornia Click To Tweet

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In our day to day life, when we rush for results relentlessly, we exist in a realm of just one dimension.

When the rhythm of our daily life breaks by some unexpected reality, flowers, poems, birds, and love give us back our missed dimensions to which we escape; a precious relief for sure.

They nurture us and keep us sane and we re-enter our routine again! My visit to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens resurfaces often like it did today during my long walk in the morning.

I decided to decorate a blank white WordPress screen with flowers, words, and memory. Hope you like it!

To get immersed into something complete and great is happiness!

Chirasree Banerjee

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Chirasree Banerjee

Hello. My name is Chirasree. I have been traveling for almost 11 years to places all over the world. I enter into a separate reality during my travels and enjoy the allure of escape from the mundane. I seek beauty through nature and human-made creations. Because beauty is powerful. I seek knowledge. I observe, absorb, and write about the places I visit and the profound realizations and inspirations that each place has to offer.