Palos Verdes in Los Angeles is home to a lesser-known botanic garden that is quite the hidden gem, especially in spring and summer. The 87-acre property with 2,500 species of plants from all over the world particularly excels in California native plants, many of which have colorful blooms year-round. The most notable highlights of a day at the South Coast Botanic Garden include:
- Small but stunning Dahlia Garden with an exceptional variety of dahlias seemingly at their best in mid to late summer.
- Fuchsia Garden maintained by the National Fuchsia Society, with varieties in red, orange, yellow, white, peach and purple.
- Rose Garden of over 1,600 roses (which they continually add to).
- Children’s Discovery Garden maintained by volunteers is designed around nursery rhymes with an enchanted dollhouse, bridge, and alphabet garden and soon will be part of a “Kids Club” with creative activities for visitors.
- Desert Garden with aloes, cacti and other succulents from across the US, Africa, Mexico and South America, many of which you’ve never seen before.
The Rose Garden includes a large collection of beautiful David Austin English Roses like these. Aren’t they stunning?
They have plans to unveil a new Rose Garden in the fall of 2017 which will be home to nearly 2 acres of rose beds.
This pretty Hybrid Tea Rose ‘Rosa Party Time’ kept me company as I sought shade at one the garden’s memorial benches.
The Rejmans Firecracker Dahlia is certainly a spectacular one, just one of many dahlia varieties they collect.
The stone lanterns in their Japanese Garden were designed over 200 years ago in Japan.
oOo
The history of the property is an interesting one in which the gardens were built atop a landfill. This is the first instance of landfill reclamation and so is a model for land reuse worldwide. Today the Garden’s beautifully mature trees, trails and specialty gardens are a welcome contrast to it’s former life.
The Garden offers tram tours for anyone that needs such assistance and it’s great that their annual membership ($35-65) includes your entry fee as well as entry to 29 other California gardens and 250 gardens nationwide. That includes the Los Angeles County Arboretum and botanic gardens all over the country. I hope that you bring your mom or your family out to the gardens… those dahlias aren’t going to admire themselves!
As always, thank you so much for visiting Try Something Fun.
For more information please visit the South Coast Botanic Garden website.
