It is the oldest botanical garden in the United States and ranks in the top three world-wide. Covering 79 acres just outside of downtown St. Louis, it is considered an oasis in the city. Within the walls are magnificent gardens and rare collections of botanical, horticultural, and historical materials residing with architecturally
significant buildings and inspirational fountains and statuary. The grounds of the Missouri Botanical Garden feature gardens, modern and traditional, and living collections of major groups of ornamental and practical plants. Greenhouses and conservatories display plants native to lands far removed from St. Louis.
The Historic District - an area containing many of the Garden's original buildings including the founder's home, Tower Grove House, the Museum, a Victorian garden, a Maze, and a Victorian observation tower.
The William T. Kemper Center for Home Gardening - 23 demonstration gardens featuring residential landscaping ideas and techniques outside and inside, displays, exhibits, reference library, computer gardening software, demonstration kitchen, greenhyouse, Plant Doctor, and a working beehive.
The Nanjing Friendship Garden - built in the style of the southern provinces of China, this garden is a "retreat for gentlemen or scholars," a special haven separate from the distractions of everyday life, a place where people can experience "an eternal moment of suspended time when man and nature seem in perfect accord."
The Linnean House,
opened in 1882. It is the oldest continually operating display greenhouse in the United States. Jack Jennings 1996.
Camellias; orchids, roses, bulb gardens, waterlillies, daylilies, irisis, azaleas-rhodendendrons, boxwood, dwarf conifers, cactus, carnivorous plants, tropical trees and plants, peonies, dawn redwoods, herbs, hostas, perennials and much more.
Herbarium- 4.5 million dried specimens of mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and flowering plants.
Carl Milles sculptures
Spink Gallery porcelain sculptures by Edward Marshall Boehm.
From Labor Day to Memorial Day - 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Grounds open at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays for exercise walking (conservatories not open).
Admission & Directions:
For visitors from outside the City or County of St. Louis
$5.00 for adults,
$3.00 for seniors
(to be voted on in January, 1998 -if approved, this will go into effect on Feb. 1, 1998)
For visitors from within the City or County limits,
$3.00 for adults,
$1.50 for seniors.
Children 12 and under and members are free.
From Hwy. 40 or 44 take Kingshighway South to Vandeventer.
Turn left on Vendeventer to Shaw Blvd. Turn right on Shaw to Garden.
