Okay, I'll admit it -- I'm a tree hugger. I literally love trees and derive so much inspiration from these natural sculptures. I could take nothing but tree pictures for the rest of my life and be content. And why not, they provide such interesting shapes, colors and variety. Just look for the faces in the trees and you could loose yourself in search for Treebeard. One of the great places to see unusual trees is not some dark forest imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, but in the Winterthur Museum, Library and Garden, located in Northern Delaware. This former du Ponte estate was gifted to the state of Delaware to be preserved as a public place of beauty and solitude. Henry Francis du Ponte was a horticulturalist as well as a wealthy industrialist. His one condition for donating the estate was that he remain the head Gardner for the rest of his life. This pictures in this gallery depict some of du Ponte's most inspired choices as a Gardner. The trees at Winterthur almost don't seem real. But alive, and beautiful, they most certainly are. Other subjects in this gallery were found in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, where the trees often show off their personalities even when dead. Finally, the foggy and frosty winter environment of Teton Valley presented the inspiration for several of the pictures in this gallery.
