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| San Francisco Botanical Garden Visitor Guide
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1. Entry Garden Contrasting shapes, varied leaf forms, and striking combinations of foliage colors enhance this innovative design that highlights plants from the Garden’s collections as well as new introductions.
2. Library Courtyard Thomas Church designed this formal courtyard entrance to the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture in the early 1970s. The pink flowers of Himalayan luculia fill the air with fragrance and paperbark maples add color and texture.
3. Library Terrace Garden The openness of this garden, with its fountain, benches, fine paving, and surrounding beds of rare plants, contrasts with the intimate spaces, dense plantings, and garden pathways of the East Asia Garden.
4. Rock Garden This small circular raised bed exhibits rock garden plants of varied texture and color from all over the world. Visitors young and old are attracted to these mounding plants with diminutive leaves and flowers.
5. Demonstration Garden Several distinct small gardens offer quiet places to sit. Of special note is the Jean Wolff Garden with its white-flowering shrubs and perennials. The graceful pavilion nearby is surrounded by Japanese maples and a colorful arroyo of drought tolerant perennials.
6. Great Meadow No longer considered just a lawn, its diversity of broadleaf plants and grasses create rich vistas in the garden. Because we don’t use herbicides, the presence of English daisies, buttercups, and other plants create a year-round tapestry of plants seen along the viewing axis of the Great Meadow.
The five mediterranean regions of the world—California, the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the western Cape of South Africa, central coastal Chile, and southern and southwestern Australia—have mild temperate climates with winter rain and summer drought. Many plants from all these regions grow well in the hospitable climate of San Francisco and the Bay Area.
7. California Garden This garden provides a constant show of color. Early spring brings California lilac and pink-flowering currant. Later, the meadow is carpeted with butter-yellow meadow foam, cobalt-blue iris, orange California poppy, and bright green bunchgrasses. In summer, the strong pinks of clarkia and buckwheat contrast with the golden grasses.
8. Redwood Trail Pathways wind through a century-old grove of redwood trees, which create a habitat for moisture-loving plant species that include native ginger and redwood sorrel.
9. Nature Trail An interpretive deck and pond help children and adults learn about plants and animals from four primary California coastal habitats. The trail is a natural outdoor classroom and observation spot.
10. South Africa Garden Plants native to the southern tip of Africa—proteas, heathers, restios, silver trees, colorful bulbs, and aloes—flourish in the curving terraces of the South Africa Garden. The Cape region of South Africa has one of the world’s highest densities of plant species.
11. Australia Garden Members of the colorful protea and myrtle families highlight this garden. Other distinctive plants include the grass tree and the kangaroo paw with red, green, or yellow flower clusters and grass-like foliage. Colorful Banksia, Correa, and bottlebrush species add interest to the collection in late summer.
12. Chile & South America Garden A magnificent mayten tree is the centerpiece of the Chilean garden. Note the hot colors of Peruvian lilies, red bells of Chilean bellflower, fragrant angel’s trumpets, and Winter’s Bark, a sacred tree used in healing ceremonies.
The Entry Garden, Succulent Garden, and Garden of Fragrance also contain plants from the mediterranean regions of the world.
The mild temperate zones of the world, such as eastern Australia and New Zealand, do not experience extreme seasonal variation and provide an array of colorful shrubs that bloom almost year round in the Garden. Plants from China and Japan, the mainstay of western horticulture, along with those from other areas of temperate Asia are found in the East Asia, Asian Discovery Garden, Rhododendron, and Moon-Viewing gardens and adjacent areas.
13. East Asia A few steps off the main path in the East Asia Garden, Japanese maples, water iris, and sedge are reflected on the tranquil surface of the Anelli Pond.
14. Moon-Viewing Garden This garden and pond were a gift from the local chapter of Ikebana International in 1973. Magnolias, Japanese maples, and camellia hybrids surround the reflecting pond, which has a wooden platform for viewing the autumn moon. The sound of water and the sight of birds bathing in a rocky, sunlit stream overhung by Japanese maples make the garden magical.
15. New Zealand Garden This collection is one of the most comprehensive outside New Zealand and includes some of the oldest tree specimens in the Garden. Colorful New Zealand flax, purple-flowering hebes, and red-flowering New Zealand Christmas trees are striking features.
The average temperature and humidity of San Francisco’s foggy coastal climate is similar to that of mountain regions in tropical America and Asia. These cloud forests contain an enormous diversity of plants that offer new horticultural possibilities for warmer Bay Area gardens.
16. Meso-American Cloud Forest The mountainous region of southern Mexico and Central America supports a remarkable variety of plant species, including colorful passion vines, fuchsias, tree dahlias, and salvias. Plants with huge leaves, such as tree daisies and giant groundsel are prominent in this habitat garden.
17. Southeast Asian Cloud Forest A unique collection of fragrant, vividly colored vireya rhododendrons, usually found at high elevations in southeast Asia, form the backbone of this developing garden. This cloud forest habitat introduces new, often rare or endangered, Asian plant species to visitors.
18. Garden of Fragrance In the Garden of Fragrance, plants with aromatic foliage—salvia, rosemary, lemon verbena, lavender, and Grecian laurel—grow in crescent-shaped beds built of stones from a 12th century Spanish monastery. This sheltered area, one of the warmest in the Garden, is a favorite with visitors and birds.
19. Rhododendron Garden This garden has a collection of primary species derived from southwestern China and the eastern Himalayas. The garden is noted for its tree-like Arborea and fragrant Maddenia rhododendrons, which require mild winters.
20. Primitive Plant Garden Most plants known from the fossil record are extinct. However, living relatives of these ancient plants have continued to evolve over time and remain in the modern flora. Club mosses, true mosses, ferns, horsetails, cycads, ginkgo trees, conifers, and flowering plants illustrate the fascinating story of plant evolution.
21. Garden of Perennials The focal point for this small formal perennial garden is an arbor framed by large purple wisterias that bloom in spring. The seating in the arbor provides an excellent place to enjoy a vista of lawn with the central fountain in the distance.
22. Succulent Garden Limestone walls border this warm, terraced garden of plants that have adapted to extended periods of drought. Gigantic orange-flowered aloes, bold-striped agaves, barrel cactus, turquoise-flowered puyas, and other succulents attract hummingbirds, butterflies, and nesting woodpeckers.
23. Children’s Garden Wood-chip paths meander through child-sized beds of vegetables, fruits, and herbs. A butterfly garden, extensive planting beds, and a composting area make this the ideal spot for school and summer programs for children. Children maintain the garden, learning about their relationship with the natural world as they plant, weed, water, and compost.
24. Camellia Garden This garden features camellia species from Indomalaysia and East Asia, as well as, japonica, sasanqua, and reticulata hybrids. Camellias are perhaps best known as the source of tea (C. sinsensis) dating back to Confucius. However their economic uses include ornamental horticultural applications as flowering plants in containers and in the landscape, and oil derived from the seeds of C. oleifera, C. japonica, and C. sasanqua used in cooking and in skin products.
The San Francisco Botanical Garden Visitor Guide is available for sale at the San Francisco Botanical
Garden Bookstore.
Printable Garden Map