Pruhonice Zámek/Chateau and Park © Ricky Yates
In June 2012, Sybille and I visited Pruhonice Park for the first time. In my blog post about that visit, I said that, as we had only explored about a quarter of the park, we planned to return to explore more of it at some future date. I also mentioned that Pruhonice Park is famous for is its collection of rhododendrons which flower in May. Knowing this, a return visit in May 2013 has been provisionally scheduled for some time. Therefore this week, on my day off, we finally made our second visit and saw the flowering rhododendrons in all their glory. We also got to explore some remoter areas of the park.
Rather than writing about the beautiful rhododendrons in all their immense variety of colours, this is an occasion when one picture can take the place of a thousand words. So here are a selection of photographs that I took during our visit earlier this week which I hope give some indication of the beauty of this UNESCO World Heritage Site and Czech National Historic Landmark.
Yellow rhododendrons © Ricky Yates
Pink rhododendrons © Ricky Yates
Orange & yellow rhododendrons © Ricky Yates
White rhododendrons reflected in the lake © Ricky Yates
Seven new Pruhonice Park residents & their mother © Ricky Yates
A wonderful distraction from all the beautiful flowering rhododendrons 🙂
 Rockery with rhododendrons © Ricky Yates |
 Pink & red rhododendrons © Ricky Yates |
 A view across Pruhonice Park © Ricky Yates |
 Walking in a remoter part of Pruhonice Park © Ricky Yates |
 Individual rhododendron bloom © Ricky Yates |
 White rhododendron bloom © Ricky Yates |
 Orange rhododendron bloom © Ricky Yates |
 Not a rhododendron but a white peony © Ricky Yates |
The park contains many tree species from around the world. This is what is commonly known as a handkerchief tree, whose natural habitat is southern China.
 Handkerchief Tree © Ricky Yates |
 Handkerchiefs on the handkerchief tree © Ricky Yates |
I grew up in Seattle, Washington and the state flower is the rhododendron but I had NO IDEA they came in such an amazing variety of colors! Beautiful!
Neither did I Stephen! Count Arnošt Emanuel Silva-Tarouca who founded the park in the nineteenth century, introduced species from around the globe, hence the incredible variety of colours. Beautiful indeed!
Lovely
Indeed Mike! Have you & the family ever been there?
I’ve visited the park on several occasions and it is beautiful at any time of the year, but you have captured the beauty of spring in the park at it’s finest!
Hi Linda – Many thanks for visiting my blog & leaving a comment for the first time. And thank you for your kind words!
The pictures would be even better if they wern’t on top of each other again.
June
June – I presume you’re referring to ones that are meant to be side-by-side further down the post. My webmaster, aka Sybille, says that the problem is due to the size of your screen. But she has now made a technical change to my ‘theme’ which hopefully should have resolved the problem. I would love to hear back from you as to whether it has done so or not.
Glorious!! What a feast for the eyes. 🙂 Thanks, Ricky.
Indeed Perpetua – the flowering rhododendrons were a sight to behold & I hope my photos do them justice. So glad you enjoyed them!
Beautiful! I especially like the reflections in the lakes! 😀
Thank you Hana – So glad you enjoyed the photos. Pruhonice is a very beautiful place which I thoroughly enjoyed visiting once again.
[…] collection of mature trees, there were several rhododendron bushes still in flower – shades of our visit to Pruhonice Park the previous […]