Palm Springs, California – The Parker Gardens

Yesterday I showed you the funky interior of the Parker Palm Springs, the hotel Mark & I stayed at for a work event when we visited California last week. Today I have to share with you the beautiful exterior spaces!

Keep in mind that this was my first time to California and I was left to entertain myself on this leg of the journey since Mark was busy working. It was heavenly to sit at the pool and read without looking at my watch, exercise without thinking about how I had to get to the grocery store, and walk around taking photos without my chitlins moaning and groaning about me taking their pictures! {On the other hand…..I started missing them badly when I had all this time to myself!}

Like many resort communities, the area surrounding the Parker Palm Springs is vastly different than the hotel property. Palm Springs is in the desert and I think it is beautiful in it’s own way. Mighty palm trees line the main thoroughfares along with a smattering of hearty drought-resistant flowering plants. The brown mountains along the perimeter are quite a site to behold; certainly vastly different from the East Coast and even from the Laguna Beach area we had just come from.

The hotel grounds, however, are lush with green plantings and landscaped with sandy paths, surrounded by amazingly varied vegetation. Little yellow flowers were scattered along the paths as if a little flower girl had just skipped through there.

This is the entrance to the building our room was in….can you see the door hidden in there?

I almost flipped my lid at the site of this beautiful little carved wooden door built into a wall, leading to another garden!!

Mark was not as excited about this as me. Apparently he never read one of my all-time childhood favorites (or saw the fairly recent movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the by.)

The hotel grounds actually include several intimate gardens. This one has a fire pit all aglow every night, and for one of Mark’s work events in the evening, it was transformed with chocolate brown velvet couches, tables, candles and a bar.

Our room had a Juliet balcony that overlooked a sweet little garden. As soon as we  checked into our room, we looked out the window and there in the garden below a wedding ceremony was taking place, the bride walking down the aisle just as we happened to peek out!

Another shady little garden had hammocks hung between the palm trees. That might have been my favorite garden of all!

And then of course the flowers….most of which we have back here in Massachusetts, but the number of them, the combination of their colors against the green vegetation and the pure blue California sky…..such a gorgeous combination! *sigh*

On our last night we also ventured outside the hotel for a tour of the desert in an open jeep. What an amazing country we live in!! Anyone want to join me in a rendition of “America the Beautiful”??? Oh beautiful for spacious skies……

{Thank you most patient husband in the universe, who not only put up with a wife yielding a camera on self-timer mode for 6 straight days, but also made this trip so fun and special! ((Look honey, you even managed to kinda smile for this picture!!))  Forget the Parker Palm Springs-inspired rooms I’m adding on if I hit the lottery…..I already hit the lottery with you.}

Thanks for visiting today…..hope you enjoyed these pretty outdoor spaces!