LAS VEGAS -- Butterflies, tulips and daffodils in Vegas? What are the odds of that?

	At Bellagio in Las Vegas, there's a pond, flower beds and topiary in the conservatory. Click photo for larger image.

It's a safe bet that almost no one heads to this gambling mecca in the Nevada desert looking for pretty flowers and lush landscaping. But if you look past the slot machines and green-felted blackjack and poker tables, you can find some natural greenery. Best of all, the view is usually as free as a casino cocktail, and you don't have to gamble to drink it all in.

The Bellagio is the big winner here, with a 30,000-square-foot conservatory and botanical garden near its lobby. Although best known for its musical, dancing fountains, the hotel/casino has been creating five seasonal flower shows (including one for Chinese New Year) since it opened in 1998. Each one is unique, with a clever blend of plants, ornaments and water features. Less colorful but almost as impressive, given the intense heat, are the Bellagio's grounds, which feature privet and boxwood amid rows of olive, cypress and pine trees.

The Mirage, Paris, Caesar's Palace and Treasure Island also have picturesque pools, fountains and water features whose dramatic lighting helps them stand out amid Vegas' ubiquitous neon at night. But glowing gas can't hold a candle to the spectacle of 100-foot waterfalls and a mountain lake at The Wynn, a little farther up the Strip.

Although open only two years, Steve Wynn's latest and grandest project features a manmade mountain of rock and 10 acres bristling with 1,400 old Afghan and Aleppo pines, the tallest stretching 165 feet above the lake. Angel Falls, just a trickle compared with its namesake in Venezuela, is still an impressive 100-foot drop, wowing visitors before they even set foot inside Mr. Wynn's ultra-luxurious hotel.

"He said, 'When they walk in the door, I want to knock their socks off,' " said Jim Gibbons, executive director of horticulture.

At Bellagio, a gardener's hat, watering can and frog all done in topiary. Click photo for larger image.

But once your socks are back on and you're done taking pictures, what can you learn from The Wynn? For garden ideas, you'll have more luck at the Bellagio's conservatory.

In the space of about one week in early March, between 75 and 100 designers, engineers, landscapers and laborers created the hotel's current display, which will remain in place through mid-May. Overseen by Audra Danzak and Gary Cramer, Bellagio's executive director and assistant director of horticulture, respectively, the spring show features oversized topiary egrets, snails, flower pots, a watering can -- even a garden hat big enough for Mother Nature herself.

Rows of tiny Alternanthera are the dominant topiary plant, although you'll also find Sahara roses, cut flowers, succulents and many types of pods and seeds. A 5-foot-long frog, for example, sports 'Kermit' chrysanthemums, reindeer and sheet moss, and green coffee beans.

Fall-blooming mums and ornamental cabbage aren't typical partners for tulips, hyacinths and azaleas. But here, protected by a 45-foot-high glass ceiling and well watered, it all works. Mr. Cramer said the tulips are replaced every seven days and the azaleas and mums every two weeks.

One revelation at the show is the swaths of low-growing pink or blue lace-cap hydrangeas. To someone used to seeing them clustered on a bush, the fluffy flowers suddenly look very exotic edged with ivy and echeveria. To get the effect, each is planted in a 6-inch container and replaced every two weeks or so, Ms. Danzak said.

	The whimsical theme at the Bellagio conservatory includes a large plastic flower swaying over a giant ladybug. Click photo for larger image.

A rectangular pool at the front of the display is a natural focal point. Two 7-foot-tall egrets made of white statice stand among lotus, water lilies and tiny fountains called water blossoms. Created by WET Design of Los Angeles (which also makes the dancing fountains outside and created the fountain in Pittsburgh's PPG Place), the little cascades continually change shape like an opening flower.

They were my 9-year-old son's favorite -- until he discovered the water laminars arcing over the paths to the greenhouse at the center of the conservatory. The smooth streams, which look remarkably like solid tubing, are created by removing oxygen from H20.

"It is real water," marveled one visitor as she broke the flow with her hand.

The staff used WET Design's laminars again with a huge topiary watering can. Here, the jets spurt from a patch of wheat grass into the holes on the spout.

"People never get tired of playing with them," Ms. Danzak said. "We do different things with them at pretty much every show."

However, the real stars at the Bellagio every spring are the hundreds of live butterflies that flutter about within the two sections of the glasshouse. Air-mailed in from Costa Rica, Malaysia and other parts of the globe, 30 to 40 species dance amid hanging pots, antique garden tools and other props within the glassed-in potting shed.

The rainbow-hued creatures -- including one whose huge wings looked like an animal's eye -- so captivated one British visitor that she borrowed my son to make sure he saw them all.

Something about butterflies brings out the child in everyone, said Ms. Danzak, who first caught the flower bug at age 14 in Warren, Mich. Although she and the Bellagio sometimes strive to create technically sophisticated shows with carefully labeled orchids and rare cultivars, it's the simple pleasures that win over visitors.

"The dog with the wagging tail in the Chinese New Year show got much more attention than the orchids," she said, laughing.

Over at The Wynn, Vanda orchids are the signature flower, and the atrium is the home of the indoor garden. Mr. Gibbons and horticulture director Teresa Ellison oversee the permanent collection of 25-foot tall Indian laurel fig trees (Ficus nitida), foliage plants like Aglaonema and Philodendron 'Xanadu' and varieties of kalanchoe for color. Seasonal additions include mums, azaleas and hydrangeas.

Although the resort's owner insists the fig trees must be painted -- "Mr. Wynn likes brown trunks" -- he is a gardener's dream client.

"Landscape is often at the bottom of the food chain," Mr. Gibbons said. "But Mr. Wynn is so into plants.... There is no 'no' here."

At the Bellagio, Ms. Danzak and her army of helpers will take down the spring show in May and install the summer display, which always features Americana. Last year, it was a garden railroad.

"It takes a lot out of me. But on that first Saturday, when I look at what we did, I'm proud of myself, my staff, my vendors and how we come together as a team.

"We're in Vegas and this is a show."