MaryLynn Mack could not have said it better. When you’re a public garden, you’re a garden for the public, for all the people, says the incoming president of the American Public Gardens Association and chief operating officer at South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes Peninsula, California. In addition to championing sustainability and conservation along with their incredible aesthetic gifts, botanical gardens are striving to better engage with local communities and diversify leadership. Let find out The Beautiful and Best Garden to Visit Now below.
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The Beautiful and Best Garden to Visit Now
ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Set in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, along the Rio Grande, the 32-acre Botanic Garden is part of the city’s vibrant ABQ BioPark. With its apt focus on plants from the American Southwest and other arid climates, the garden also showcases local habitats in New Mexico and medicinal plants. Its Desert and Mediterranean Conservatories were awarded the New Mexico Architectural Foundation’s 2019 Architecture Community Award, with special shout outs for maintaining these environments with little or no imported energy.
Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix
As the home to more than 4,000 species of cactus, trees, and flowers from around the world, 485 rare and endangered, these 140 acres speak botanical truth to the beauty of the desert. Founded in 1939 by a small group of passionate locals including Swedish botanist Gustaf Starck who posted a sign that read, Save the Desert, the botanical garden has gone beyond that original mission with initiatives including an incubator farm, family gardens, and a farmers’ market to transform south Phoenix’s food desert into a food oasis.
Its creative programming includes desert landscaping courses, an up close encounter with the country’s most prominent agave collection including a tequila tasting, and an insider photo tour of the garden’s most Instagrammable spots.
Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Like a small kingdom, this famed botanical garden sprawls over 1,077 acres of meadows and woodlands as well as splendid outdoor gardens from naturalist to formal and glorious spaces for performances of all manner, plus, 20 indoor gardens in a series of heated greenhouses. A true center for horticulture, Longwood hosts a two years professional horticultural school, a graduate program, and internships and maintains 16 core plant collections.
Ganna Walska Lotusland, Montecito, California
Polish singer and socialite Madame Ganna Walska spent 43 years cultivating a lushly exuberant garden of exotic plants on the Montecito, California, estate she bought in 1941. It’s a gift to the world that after Walska’s death in 1984, Lotusland as she called it became a nonprofit botanic garden that opened in 1993.
The 37 acres still hum with Walska’s love of the dramatic and the whimsical, and the garden continues to expand its mission with environmental education programs for families and a new junior botanist program that invites Santa Barbara County 4th graders and their families for a special visit to Lotusland free of charge.
Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri
Known locally as Shaw’s Garden founded by businessman, amateur botanist, and philanthropist Henry Shaw in 1859, the Missouri Botanical Garden is the oldest in continuous operation in the U.S. A vibrant center for research and science education, the centerpiece of three parcels is 79 acres in the midst of St. Louis that includes Shaw’s original estate home, a 14 acre Japanese strolling garden, and one of the world’s largest collections of rare and endangered orchids. A butterfly house in Chesterfield’s Faust Park and the 2,400 acre Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit complete the treasured trifecta.
Santa Fe Botanical Garden, Santa Fe, New Mexico
The vision of a small group of gardeners, botanists, and environmentalists bloomed in the high desert in 1987 and now comprises the Santa Fe Botanical Garden at Museum Hill, as well as a 35 acre wetland preserve in La Cienega. The garden focuses on regional geology, botany, and cultural history, including the centerpiece Orchard Gardens and the Ojos y Manosj Eyes and Hands Garden, an outdoor classroom that showcases plants used for healing, food, weaving, and dyeing. Eight miles of trails along an arroyo demonstrate arroyo restoration techniques, and a new parcel of a little more than three acres will open this year as the Piñon Juniper Woodland.
San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco
A jewel of Golden Gate Park, this beloved destination for locals who enter for free and tourists alike is home to 9,000 plants from around the world in its 55 acres. Famed for its magnolia collection the most significant for conservation purposes in the U.S. as well as high elevation palms, conifers, and cloud forest species.
The garden has embarked on an ambitious project to add a new state of the art nursery replacing one that’s more than 50 years old that will not only support its ongoing maintenance and conservation work but add even more variety to the garden’s wildly popular plant sale program.
