At the San Francisco Botanical Garden, you can see plants that look like something out of Jurassic Park and flowers that look like white doves, or you can smell your way through an entire garden of species chosen only for their incredible scents.
And that’s just to start. The San Francisco Botanical Garden covers 55 acres, which is larger than 40 football fields. Those acres are filled with more than 8,500 varieties of plants from around the world.
Things to do at the San Francisco Botanical Garden
The best part about the San Francisco Botanical Gardens is that they always have something unusual growing or blooming.
In February, don’t miss the showy deciduous magnolia trees, which fill their bare branches with white and pink flowers that can have up to 36 petals each.
In early spring, it’s hard to ignore the primitive-looking plants on the edge of the Ancient Garden. Technically called Gunnera tinctoria, it is also called Chilean rhubarb or dinosaur food, an appropriate name for a prehistoric-looking plant. Gardeners trim the plants out of the ground each winter, but they grow back at a dizzying rate, reaching four feet tall in just a few months and producing a stem in the center of exotic male and female flowers.
If you go in May, you can catch the flowering pigeon tree. The part that is technically the flower is small, but they are surrounded by white wing-shaped bracts that can reach six to seven inches in length. Some people say they look like pigeons.
September is a great time to see the spectacular angel’s trumpet in bloom, with spectacular hanging and fragrant flowers in a variety of colors.
You will find some of its thousands of plants doing something interesting no matter when you go. You can find current bloomers on the San Francisco Botanical Garden website.
If you are planning a marriage proposal at the Botanical Garden, the fragrance garden is a good place. Or explore the garden ahead of time to find a secluded spot among the plants to ask that big question.
What you need to know
In case you’re wondering what happened to the arboretum in Golden Gate Park, it’s now the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum.
Admission is charged for anyone over four years of age. Members and residents of the City of San Francisco enter for free. The same goes for everyone else on a few select days a year listed on the website.
If you are visiting in a wheelchair, most of the Garden’s trails are accessible and are marked on signage signage with the ISA symbol. Complimentary wheelchairs are also available at both garden entrances on a first-come, first-served basis.
Strollers are also allowed, but not other wheeled vehicles.
If you are a gardener who wants to take home some of your beautiful plants, plan your visit during one of their monthly or annual sales, which is not only the largest plant sale in Northern California, but includes many of -a type of specimens. You can find the sale dates on their website.
You can visit the Botanical Garden when you go to Golden Gate Park. It’s at the eastern end of the park, near the California Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum, and the Japanese Tea Garden. You can also see more plants and flowers in the Conservatory of Flowers and in the park’s outdoor flower gardens, which include a dahlia garden, a tulip garden, and a rose garden.
How to get there
The San Francisco Botanical Garden is located in Golden Gate Park, near the corner of 9th Avenue and Lincoln Way. It has two entrances: the main door on 9th Avenue and another door on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive,
If you are driving to the San Francisco Botanical Garden, you can find directions on their website.
Street parking is available near both entrances, but fills up on weekends and holidays.
On Saturdays, Sundays, and major holidays, you can park elsewhere in the park and take Golden Gate Park transportation, or at any time, you can get there by public transportation. If you arrive by bike, you will find bike racks at both entrances.
