Whenever I get to travel, especially on business trips, I usually seek out two types of entertainment: botanical gardens and art galleries. Botanical gardens offer a soothing combination of being surrounded by vegetation (which is proven to be beneficial for mental and physical health), a low density of people (anecdotally, with similar benefits on yours truly :)), and in general a calm environment that helps recharging your batteries. In Japan, the term “shinrin-yoku” (~ forest-bathing) is used to describe the intentional activity of spending time in nature to boost your health, and as usual, the Japanese are onto something.
Walking around a botanical garden, surrounded by hundreds and thousands of fascinating species of plants, with butterflies and bumblebees and birds flitting about, is an experience that provides a great counterbalance to the stress of traveling. Next time you are traveling and need to catch a break, give it a try - in a lot of cases, the entrance is free. Even if you’re not that into plants, you could read a book on a bench or just take a walk.
One of my recent trips was to Dublin (a lovely city!), and I could not miss the trip to the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. These gardens have to be one of the larger botanical gardens I have visited, and the beautiful Victorian glasshouses only underscore the natural beauty of all the plants. Even the gloomy weather couldn’t spoil my enjoyment of all the variety of flora (over 15,000 species!). A pleasant surprise was the National Herbarium with over half a million dried plants, with the oldest dating back to the 17th century.
As I was taking a picture of a particularly impressive Philodendron Tree leaf, I got the idea that close-up shots of large leaves would make for great wallpapers. So for the rest of my visit, I took pictures of various leaves, and after coming home I was really happy with how these turned out to be as wallpapers. Yes, I could just google “wallpaper large leaf” and probably get even more beautiful background, but there is a certain joy and pride in doing things for yourself. In low-stake situations like this, I like to opt for my own, often scrappy or DIY solutions over someone else’s work: this way I feel much more of a connection to the photo.
In case you would like to use the wallpapers too, you can find them at this link. Wallpapers are 2560x1440 px and are dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal.
