If you're watching the Cities: Skylines series you'll have seen me add a spiffy new Botanical Gardens to Bussy Lag (turn left just before the rubbish dump). But why don't we have a look INSIDE?

Here is the first room, the Tropical House, standing on the bridge over a koi pond:

It is very warm in this room. Here is the pond itself...

The Koi carp enjoy chasing people around and trying to eat their fingers. Sing the theme from Jaws here. If you throw in a coin, you might get lucky enough that they don't come after your fingers.

Through the Tropical House is the Sub-tropical House, which is much cooler (in temperature).

There are very tall things growing right up into the roof, none of which I can now name. One of them is probably called 'white flowers':

This picture is all the things that eat things:

A close-up of some orange flowers of some sort:

And this is a Bird of Paradise plant/Strelitzia reginae (hooray, I remembered!):

The Sub-tropical House leads through to the Arid House, which contains lots of giant cacti. However, in this picture is the lesser-spotted Cat-ti.

Through into the Mediterranean House, where there are lots and lots and lots and lots of flowers.

There are also lots and lots and lots of flowers outside:

There is also an aviary containing the World's Noisiest Bird (TM):

This is a big swampy area containing the World's Smelliest Plant (TM) - I shouldn't even joke about this, as it was horrible. And there was loads of it. It's called skunk cabbage and it smells exactly how it sounds!

There is a butterfly house, but, sadly, no butterflies until the end of May. All of the giant cacti are in there at the moment. It is the no-butterfly house.

And no gardens would be complete without a pretty waterfall arrangement. No children allowed on the bridge!

Alas, if only computer games really were advanced enough to let you walk around the buildings. [NOTE: They are! I want to be able to walk around the Botanical Gardens!] These pictures were really taken in Birmingham Botanical Gardens, which is a lovely little oasis of calm just on the edge of the city centre.

I wasn't going to visit to begin with, and only went because I'd already been to the Sea Life centre and like butterflies, but I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend a visit. It took about 90 minutes to walk around and I could have happily gone around again and stayed all day. It has a tea room, bandstand, sensory garden and seasonal events. You can even buy some of the plants!

If you're planning to go, you can follow butterflies and cacti here.