Huntington Library - Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

The Huntington's botanical gardens cover 120 acres (485,624 m²) and the theme gardens contain rare plants from around the world. The gardens are divided into more than a dozen themes, including the Australian Garden, Camellia Collection, Children's Garden, Desert Garden Conservatory, Rose Hill Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science, Desert Garden, Herb Garden, Japanese Garden and Zen Garden, Lily Pond, North Vista, Palm Garden, Rose garden, Elizabethan Garden (previously called the Shakespeare garden), Subtropical and Jungle Garden, the Chinese Garden (Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園 or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance) now open in the northern area of the property, and America's largest collection of the sculptural and 'palm-like' Cycads.

The Conservatory for Botanical Science has a large tropical plant collection, as well as a carnivorous plants wing. The Huntington has a program to protect and propagate endangered plant species. In 1999, 2002, 2009 and 2010, specimens of Amorphophallus titanum, or the odiferous "corpse flower", bloomed at the facility.

The Huntington Desert Garden, one of the world's largest and oldest collections of cacti and other succulents, contains plants from extreme environments, many of which were acquired by Mr. Huntington and Mr. William Hertrich (the garden curator) in trips taken to several countries in North, Central and South America. One of the Huntington’s most botanically important gardens, the Desert Garden, idealized by Mr. Hertrich, brings together a plant group largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s. Containing a broad category of xerophytes (aridity-adapted plants), the Desert Garden grew to preeminence and remains today among the world’s finest, with more than 5,000 species.

The Australian Garden, a large open field planted with Eucalyptus trees serves as a recreated "Australian Outback." The Rose Garden contains approximately 1,200 cultivars (4,000 individual plants) arranged historically to trace the development of roses from ancient to modern times. The Chinese and Japanese Gardens both include historic architecture as well regional plant species.