Ringling Museum Grounds and Gardens

Banyan tree, Ringling Museum Grounds, Sarasota, Florida

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Ringling Museum Grounds and Gardens

The Ringling Museum Grounds and gardens also provide a wealth of photographic opportunities to anyone visiting the museum buildings.  As you walk through the Ringling Bayfront Gardens, as the gardens are formally known, past the two circus museum buildings you pass a number of fantastic Banyan Trees which I would estimate are each in excess of 150 feet in diameter.  In all there are 14 Banyan trees on the estate which is the largest collection in Florida. These magnificent monsters of the natural world have always been difficult to capture but now with hdr processing we are able to master some of the extreme contrasts that exist within the banyan and create an image which is much closer to the experience actually seeing them.

Rose Blossom, Mable Ringling Rose Garden, Ringling Museum Grounds, Sarasota, Florida

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There are also a number of formal gardens within the grounds which even at the end of November, when I was there, provide the photographer with many targets at which to aim the lens.  Here I have captured two of the new blooms in Mable Ringling’s Rose Garden.  Completed in 1913, the 27,225 square foot Rose Garden is Italian inspired, its circular design patterned after a wagon wheel, its pathways lined with garden sculptures of courting couples in pastoral scenes. While none of the original roses planted by Mable survive, some of the 450 rose plants are of the same varieties she planted.

Rose Blossom, Mable Ringling Rose Garden, Ringling Museum Grounds, Sarasota, Florida

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The John Ringling Estate as the mansion and surrounding grounds are known is included as part of the Caples–Ringling Estates Historic District which also includes the Charles Ringling Estate  and the Ralph Caples Estate, all of which are located next door to one another along Bayshore Drive in Sarasota.  The Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 1982.  Both the Charles Ringling Estate and the Ralph Caples Estate are now part of the campus of New College of Florida.