Information on Huntington Botanical Gardens

Stunning! You really need a week to explore this garden properly, not to mention the library and art collections (which I didn't have enough time to see).

Different themed gardens are nicely manicured, labeled and comprehensive. Beautiful buildings, statues, special paths make any tour a real treat. Don't forget they are Closed Tuesdays and are only open 10:30-4:30pm.

Enjoy!

This is, at least in my opinion, THE botanic garden for southern California, and one of the finest botanical gardens I have visited around the world. It is plenty large enough to spend a whole day touring about the gardens, which are impecably manicured and beautifully landscaped. Even if you didn't love plants as I do, you couldn't help but be impressed by the beauty and arrangement, as well as the upkeep of the place. And for those who prefer other forms of beauty, they have an art museum there, as well as a library, a conservatory (brand new), a learning center, and an exclusive 'tea house' for fine dining (never eaten there, though).

The garden is located in the middle of a ritzy district of Pasadena (San Marino) which have wonderfully landscaped mansions and quainter neighborhoods nearby, in a very old and richly planted community of southern California. The weather is excellent for planting, and it is a pretty solid 10a, but has some 9b years. Still, it is amazing the number of rare and tropical things that manage to grow in Pasadena, in local nurseries as well as this garden.

The garden is organized somewhat by theme, and somewhat by geography.. there is a huge cactus and succulent section (probably one of the best in the world, if not the best), across the street from the palm garden (excellent collection of very old (and some new) hardy subtropical palms... still, they need LOTS more!!). And near that is the a tropical garden section- basically a jungle, complete with huge ficus trees, bamboos, lots more palms, and thousands of species of tropical plants surrounding a large stream and pond. This opens out onto a giant lawn which is basically the conifer section (best Araucaria collection I have ever seen)... and then there is the nearby Australian garden- a huge expanse of tall Eucalyptus and hundreds of other native Australian trees and plants. On the other side of the garden is a nice and quite large 'Mediterranean section/Japanese gardens' that lead up to the famous rose and camelia gardens (to me, nearly a countless variety of roses of which I still haven't managed to photograph them all). And so much more!!

Sadly, many plants are either mislabeled or just not labeled, which drives me nuts, and has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the plant files- I keep adding incorrectly identified plants thanks to them... but nothing's perfect.