During your visit to the Rio Grande Botanic Garden explore botanic wonders from around the world as you make your way through the Botanical Garden’s exhibits. You can shop for Rio Grande Botanic Garden merchandise in the Garden Gift Shop. The Wildflower Café sells snacks and drinks.
Exhibits
Old World Walled Gardens
Upon entering Rio Grande Botanic Gardens you will discover a series of formal walled gardens to your right including the Spanish-Moorish Garden, Jardin Redondo and Ceremonial Garden. Beyond the first set of gates the Spanish-Moorish Garden reflects a typical Santa Fe garden. Designed to create a cool retreat, features of the Spanish-Moorish garden include walls and trees that provide shade, a sparing, but aesthetic use of water, colorful tile work and aromatic plants such as rosemary, lavender and pomegranates. Opening into a small, round garden, the Spanish-Moorish Garden features raised beds of roses called the Jardin Redondo. The central planter overflows with blooming annuals and is surrounded by over 70 varieties of award-winning roses. Old World Walled Garden’s Jardin Redondo will lead you into the Ceremonial Garden. Delight in decorative pillars and arches intermingled with clematis, wisteria and climbing roses. The focal point of the Ceremonial Garden is an elevated stage covered with an arbor of white roses.
Railroad Garden
Located on a shaded pathway between the Botanic Garden entrance and the Butterfly Pavilion is the Railroad Garden featuring two 400-foot loops of G-scale brass rails on free-floating tracks. Trains that chug along the tracks pass by villages, over trestle bridges and through tunnels.
PNM Butterfly Pavilion
Discover some of nature’s most beautiful insects in the PNM Butterfly Pavilion. Within the Pavilion are several hundred North American butterflies and thousands of nectar plants. Watch as butterflies hatch from chrysalis or capture great shots of the colorful creatures. On the opposite side of the Pavilion, additional displays showcase dozens of other insects and arachnids. Arthropod experts can often be found nearby and will be happy to share interesting information about the incredible creatures.
Mediterranean Conservatory
Discover plants native to coastal areas with hot dry summers and mild rainy winters, like the Mediterranean Sea coast, the California coast, southwestern Australia, South Africa and coastal Chile. Rockroses, bottlebrush trees, olive trees, myrtles, snapdragons and oleanders as well as a variety of mints and sages are just some of the plant life that can be found in Rio Grande Botanic Garden’s Mediterranean Conservatory.
Desert Conservatory
A hot, dry climate is present throughout the Desert Conservatory enabling the Garden’s collection of plant life from deserts of the American Southwest to thrive and bloom year-round. As you wander the Desert Conservatory you will come across saguaro cactus and palo verde trees from the Sonoran Desert, creosote and yucca from the Chihuahuan Desert and elephant trees from Baja.
Camino De Colores
Delight in the variety of the seasons. Camino De Colores features four areas, each one with plants that represent one of the four seasons. In the winter garden for instance, is a cool, icy water feature and wonderful rose planters that complement bold-colored benches that offer a place to rest.
Rio Grand Heritage Farm
Northeast of Rio Grande Botanic Garden’s conservatories is Rio Grand Heritage Farm, a recreation of a 1930s era farmstead. Surrounding the farm is a large kitchen garden, crops in the field, an orchard, vineyard and berry bushes. Explore the farm’s surrounding or head indoors to see canning, quilting and other demonstrations. On site an adobe animal barn houses a Percheron draft horse, Paint horse, a steer, Alpine goats, Navajo-Churro sheep and Dominique chickens.
Cottonwood Gallery
Discover native flora and fauna in the Cottonwood Gallery. Accessed through Rio Grande Heritage Farm, Cottonwood Gallery features a restored bosque with a canopy of mature cottonwoods and an understory of native trees and bushes. Stroll the shaded paths of the Cottonwood Gallery; teeming with wildlife, you are sure to catch a glimpse of a roadrunner, kestrel, porcupine, or great-horned owl.
Sasebo Japanese Garden
Enter through huge wooden gates and wander the paths of the Sasebo Japanese Garden winding past a large bell tower, a mixture of Japanese and local plants and native New Mexican trees pruned and sculpted in the Japanese aesthetic. Lanterns and pagoda sculptures dot the grounds while stone and wooden bridges allow you to easily pass over small streams. Highlights throughout the four-acre Sasebo Japanese Garden include a tranquil waterfall and a quaint koi pond.
Curandera Garden
The Curandera Garden commemorates curanderos, Spanish folk doctors who have been practicing in New Mexico for the last 300 years. Within the Curandera Garden you will come across a beautiful bas relief sculpture by Diego Rivera surrounded by plantings of traditional herbs that are used in curanderismo.
Dragonfly Sanctuary Pond
Rio Grande Botanic Garden boasts the first dragonfly sanctuary pond in the United States. Throughout the spring, summer and fall, the Dragonfly Sanctuary Pond is alive with dragonflies and damselflies that fly, hunt and search for mates.
Shopping in the Garden Gift Shop
Be sure to stop by the Garden Gift Shop. Film, garden tools and Rio Grande Botanic Garden souvenirs are available to purchase.
- The Rio Grande Botanic Garden is ADA complaint. Wheelchairs are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Do not forget your camera, from botanic wonders from near and far to the critters in the PNM Butterfly Pavilion, there will be exciting photo opportunities during your visit to the Rio Grande Botanic Garden.
- The Wildflower Snack Bar is open throughout the summer months and serves snack foods, ice cream and beverages.