Field trip to Seattle Center

I was lucky enough to join my oldest daughter's class on a field trip to a play at the Seattle Children's Theatre.  It is located in Seattle Center, this is also where the Space Needle, Science Center, Experience Music Project and lots of open green space that is used for different festivals and music events are located.  The day was beautiful,  sunny and cold.  After the play the kids had time to enjoy running around and I had time to look at the gardens where they played.

There are several small gardens around the Children's Theatre and lots of interesting plants.  I like how they've landscaped with so many evergreen shrubs.  There were so many textures and colors in these beds, even right now in winter.  There was a euonymus shrub that looked from a distance like something covered in yellow flowers.  It wasn't until I got closer that I noticed it was just the colorful leaves.  The areas leading up to the International fountain were full of sarcococca and pieris.  You could smell the sarcococca for a long way.   

These pussy willows were at the entrance to the theatre.  They just invited the kids attending to touch their fuzziness.

The trees are still bare, but with the different bark textures and shapes they still added a lot of interest.  I thought this one was growing in a very unusual way.  I'm not always good at identifying trees.  Any ideas?  I thought maybe it could be a weeping cherry.  

There were large polished stones for resting on in some of the beds with engravings in them.  I thought this was an interesting one.  I did a little research on Basho.  Apparently he was considered one of the finest masters of haiku.  If you click on the link you can read a little more about him.

I found one witch hazel in bloom.  I still would like to find a place for one in my garden.  It's hard to tell from the pictures how pretty the yellow and deep red looked together.  I think it's amazing in nature how colors look so pretty together.  I probably would never think to put a light yellow skirt and dark red shirt together, but on this flower it looks beautiful.  I'm sure that's why so many clothing designers use nature as inspiration.

Here is the top of the Space Needle through some trees.   The Space Needle was built for the 1962 World's Fair.  It's 605 feet high.  The view from up top is incredible.  There is also a very nice restaurant up there.  

It seemed there had been a lot of well thought out landscaping since my last visit there.   A lot of the gardens looked fairly new.  

My daughter has gotten used to me taking pictures of plants.  When one of her friends asked why I was taking the pictures, she said, "Oh my mom just really likes plants."  Being a growing gardener herself she spotted this lone blooming cyclamen and asked me to take it's picture.