Explore A Rare And Diverse Plant Collection At This Must-Visit California Garden

The West Coast is full of outdoor adventures, like many incredible national parks, but if you're in the mood for an ecological experience that doesn't involve hiking or camping, you should visit the Huntington Botanical Garden. Located in San Marino, part of Los Angeles County, California, this 130-acre botanical garden has something for everyone. The gardens contain several themed collections, including one of the largest collections of orchids in the USA. With over 10,000 individual orchids, representing over 3,000 varieties and nearly 300 genera, this orchid collection is certainly impressive! If looking at orchids isn't enough, you can also listen to them at the new Orchidées event. Musicians turned the DNA sequence of five different types of orchids into music, paired with time-lapse footage of the orchids themselves.

If you want to see rare plants, check out the Huntington Botanical Garden's cycad collection. Cycads are ancient and fascinating plants, dating back hundreds of millions of years. They resemble ferns or palm trees. One popularly cultivated cycad species is even named for this resemblance — the sago palm. The rarest of this collection is Encephalartos woodii, or E. woodii, a plant first discovered in 1895. Only one plant of this species has ever been found in the wild, a single male that has been cloned over the years to keep this species alive. You can see this rare plant and learn all about the efforts to find or create a female E. woodii plant on your trip to the Huntington Botanical Garden.

Orchids and cycads aren't the only plants to enjoy during your visit. The gardens have many collections themed around locations and plant types. Walk through the California garden to see a combination of gorgeous native plants and Mediterranean plants from other countries. The Japanese and Chinese gardens don't just feature plants native to each country. They're also designed to match the traditional gardening and architectural styles of each place. Take a stroll through them to enjoy both the tranquility and the fascinating cultural history on display. While you're in the Japanese garden, stop by the bonsai collection to see an impressive variety of bonsai trees, some of which may be 1,000 years old or older.

The herb garden features plants that may be familiar to you, like lavender and the popular sweet-smelling ground cover sweet alyssum, but there are some less common choices as well. Horehound and mignonette aren't as commonly planted these days, but they have a long history of uses. Garden mignonette has been used to create yellow dye and perfume, while horehound (a relative of mint) was used to flavor candy, teas, and more. Round out your trip with a walk through the camellia collection, home to nearly 80 species of camellia, including some rare cultivars. See the notoriously slow-growing Japanese camellia, a host of tea camellias, and even what might be the oldest camellia plant in California!