Plantsman Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, N.C., has created a beautiful botanical display garden filled with rare plants and animals.

The early morning photo shoot, part of the Garden Writers Association Symposium, was the perfect way to start the day. Buses began arriving at the Plant Delights Nursery around 7:30 and we were treated to a lovely breakfast before we hit the trails.

Plant Delights Nursery is more than a place to purchase plants. It’s a five-acre display garden with more than 17,000 different plant specimens. It would be impossible to see them all, especially since the garden is always changing.

The gardens began simply on a flat suburban site, but it has grown to become a showcase for rare and unusual ornamental plants.

Of course I was drawn to the plants in the Southwest Garden that featured delicate cacti planted with large agave, but I was equally taken with the Alpine Garden and Woodland Garden, too.

A tour of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University led to a surprising find–Opuntia Compressa (Prickly Pear Cactus) is a North Carolina native.

Even though Raleigh’s heat and humidity made it feel like I was walking through mud, the Sarah P. Duke garden tour was a beautiful introduction to “the crown jewel of Duke University.”

I expected to see lush gardens, but I didn’t expect to see a familiar face. While walking through the native gardens, I saw something that I grow in my own front yard: a prickly pear cactus.

I had no idea that cacti grew in North Carolina. Unfortunately that’s true. This variety is one of the endangered species grown in the special Steve Church Endangered Species garden.

It’s not the heat, but the humidity that probably placed this native on the endangered list.

The Duke gardens sit on a 55-acre site that was once a debris-filled ravine. Planting began in 1934 with a donation from Sarah P. Duke.