Rio Grande Botanic Garden
Main Exhibit Areas
Unearth the pleasure plants can bring you at the Rio Grande Botanic Garden. Enjoy a cool, scent-filled haven in a trio of walled, Old World gardens. During the spring, summer and fall, the outdoor Pollinators' Garden is a colorful medley of flowers and insects. Experience the greenhouse effect in the year-round blooming Desert and Mediterranean Conservatories and take a stroll through the seasons down Camino de Colores, which ends at the pathway to the all new Sasebo Japanese Garden. Immerse yourself in the past at the Heritage Farm and find herbal tradition in the Curandera Garden. For the kids, the popular Children's Fantasy Garden offers a very LARGE perspective on the world of gardening and horticulture, while the Garden Railroad offers a meticulously detailed small version of life. The PNM Butterfly Pavilion may be visited during the summer.
Sasebo Japanese Garden
Sasebo Japanese Garden opened to the public on Friday, September 28, 2007. Sasebo Garden is a classic Japanese Garden in design and construction. This four-acre ‘garden within a garden’ was designed by landscape architect Toru Tanaka and features authentic Japanese architecture and exquisite, traditional design elements such as the tile-capped garden wall and tile-roofed entry gate, an elevated bell tower, stone lanterns and pagoda sculptures, a ceremonial hand-wash basin, the murmuring waterfall, an elegant Koi pond, the arched Moon Bridge and a Moon viewing deck. The plant palette includes both traditional Japanese and American Southwest plantings. Sasebo Garden is sure to please and inspire Botanic Garden visitors with its lovely architecture and exacting detail. Learn more about Sasebo Garden. Learn more about designer Toru Tanaka.
The Sasebo Garden exhibit is included with general admission to the Rio Grande Botanic Garden (adult $7; senior/child $3).
Oriental Statuary
Several tons of granite and marble now grace the floors of the showroom near the garden entrance. Botanic Garden visitors may view Chinese and Korean statuary dating from the 8th and 9th centuries. On temporary loan to the BioPark, the Asian sculpture exhibit is included with regular admission.
Old World Walled Gardens top
These gardens are just to your right as you enter the garden. The first, a Spanish-Moorish Garden, may look like a typical Santa Fe garden to many New Mexicans. The Moorish style originated in the deserts of North Africa, was brought to Spain by the Moors and to New Mexico by the Spanish. Designed to create a cool retreat in the desert with shade provided by walls and trees, a sparing but aesthetic use of water, colorful tile work and aromatic plants, it is a style marvelously suited to our dry climate. Plants typical of Spain include rosemary, Spanish lavender as well as fig and pomegranate trees.
The Spanish-Moorish Garden opens up into a small, round garden with a raised bed of cultivated roses called the Jardin Redondo. The centerpiece is a fountain with water flowing through rings of bright blooms.
The Jardin Redondo leads into the Ceremonial Rose Garden. Decorative metal-work pillars entwined with clematis and arches covered with purple and white wisteria make a large shaded arbor. A raised stage covered with an arbor of rambler and climber roses make a perfect venue for the many weddings which take place here.
Many colorful roses are also planted outside the Ceremonial Rose Garden.
Pollinators Garden top
The walled gardens open up into the Pollinators' Garden where annuals and perennials particularly attractive to birds, bees, butterflies and moths are featured. Seasonal color displays of annuals are planted in the area closest to the walkway.
Desert and Mediterranean Conservatories top
Temperature and light control in the conservatories allow plants to thrive and bloom year-round. The Desert Conservatory's hot, dry climate supports a collection of plant life from deserts of the American Southwest. Saguaro cactus and palo verde trees from the Sonoran Desert, creosote and yucca from the Chihuahuan Desert, and elephant trees from Baja are just some of the incredible xeric-adapted plants on display.
The Mediterranean conservatory shows off a variety of plants native to coastal areas with hot dry summers and mild rainy winters, such as the Mediterranean, the California coast, southwestern Australia, South Africa and coastal Chile. Rockroses, bottlebrush trees, olive trees, myrtles, snapdragons, oleanders and numerous mints and sages have a home here in the simulated coastal environment. This conservatory is also the locale for several flower shows, including Winter Fire Colors, Bulbs in Bloom and the Orchid Show.
Camino de Colores
Each of the four areas of this garden features one of the four seasons as its theme, with plants chosen to represent each season's colors year-round. A water feature in the winter garden will look cool and icy in summer and be covered with icicles in the winter. Magnificent rose planters complement benches and a place to rest.
Rio Grande Heritage Farm
Just a few decades ago, almost everyone in America had a connection to a farm. Revive that connection at the award-winning Heritage Farm, a re-creation of a 1930's era Rio Grande farm in every detail. You can see a large kitchen garden, crops in the field, an orchard, vineyard and berry bushes. Canning, quilting and other demonstrations take place in the farmhouse, and farm animals such as cows, goats, pigs and horses live at the barn. A cider press turns much of the fall apple harvest into vinegar and cider. During the summer, take a buckboard ride, courtesy of Dick and Dan, the Percheron draft horse team.
In addition to winning the 2007 American Public Gardens Association award for excellence in programming, the Heritage Farm was honored to be invited to place an exhibit at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. from May through October 9, 2007. Heritage Farm Exhibit
Curandera Garden
Curanderos, Spanish folk doctors, have a long history in New Mexico where they've been practicing for the last 300-plus years. The Curandera garden commemorates this tradition with a beautiful bas relief sculpture by Diego "Sonny" Rivera and plantings of traditional herbs that are used by these herbalists.
Children's Fantasy Garden
A fourteen-foot high dragon guards the entrance of the Fantasy Garden that gives children a mites' eye perspective on the garden. Giant rakes, hoes and watering cans are tools used to tend huge potatoes, onions and carrots only Superman could lift. Huge bees pollinate enormous flowers, and six-foot earthworms burrow through soil. A walk-through pumpkin 42 feet in diameter and two stories high is the centerpiece of this fun garden.