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San Francisco Botanical Garden

Updated: Aug 12, 2023


Pink peonies at the Botanic Garden in late spring

Every major city in the world offers visitors sights and sounds and tastes and culture the best it can. San Francisco offers what other major metropolis and tourist destinations shell out -- and more, and its botanical garden can sometimes give San Francisco an edge or at least a different tourist offering. The San Francisco Botanical Garden is indeed a wonderful place to visit.



Like other botanical gardens, the San Franscisco Botanical Garden divides its collection according to climatic and geographical locations.


Main entrance to the Botanic Garden

There's a section for the California native plants, of course. That's a given.


The San Francisco Botanical Garden also has sections for the Andean forest, Australia and New Zealand, Chile and the mountains of South America, Mediterranean, mesoAmerican forest (southern Mexico), South Africa, Southeast Asia, and temperate Asia (China Korea and Japan and the Himalayan mountains). There might also be alpine and Canadian forest and meadows and North American desert and grassland. Thus, it gives you a whirlwind tour of the world's most representative plants by climatic and geographical zones.


It also has Specialty collections that include:

The Zellerbach garden within the San Francisco Botanical Garden

  • ancient plant garden

  • succulent garden

  • fragrance garden

  • exhibition garden

  • dry Mexico garden

  • magnolias and camellias

  • rhododendron garden

  • dwarf conifer garden

  • Zellerbach garden of perennials

The Zellerbach Garden was established in 1966 by a former San Francisco Botanical Garden board president in honor of her grandmother, Jennie Zellerbach. In this special garden the colors are muted, mostly pastel, a favorite color of the late Jennie Zellerbach. This section of the Garden is a favorite spot for weddings and pictorials.


Fragrant though toxic, BRUGMANSIA blooming at the Botanic Garden' Fragran Garden section

Throughout July, the garden becomes a venue of many grand and upright pianos placed throughout the garden. The public is free to get their fingers busy on the piano keys, or they can simply watch and listen to professionals play during most weekends. Romantic.


The San Francisco Botanical Garden sprawls on a 55-acre (22.3 hectares) expanse of planted formal gardens and naturalistic treed areas with ponds and rock work.


Its growing collection numbers about 9,000 different kinds of plants all over the world. It, however, focuses on magnolia species, mountain palms, conifers and the so-called "cloud forest species" from the high-altitude areas of Central and South America and Southeast Asia.


The Dry Mexico section of the Botanic Garden

The San Francisco Botanical Garden is open every day, whole year from 7:30 am to 6 pm. Admission to the garden is free to locals and starting at $13 for tourists. It is located in the Golden Gate Park, near the corner of Ninth Avenue (999 9th Ave) and Lincoln Way. It is actually close to the Golden Gate Bridge, accessible by bus, train, bikes or even on foot.

The sprawling San Francisco Botanical Garden has ponds and open greens interspersed with flower beds and themed gardens

The San Francisco Botanical Garden is such a big garden that you might need more than a day to cover its major attractions and thematic gardens. And you might want to cap your visit by swinging by the neighboring Japanese Tea Garden. The Gardens will make your San Francisco visit filled with pleasant sights, nice fragrance, and blooming memories. The Gardens, together, are wonderful places to visit. Enjoy.


The Japanese Tea Garden is next to the San Francisco Botanical Garden

Click on the following link to read a similar story on the San Francisco Botanical Garden: San Francisco’s Botanical Garden at the Golden Gate Park – Vendiola Personal Blog Stories (wordpress.com)




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