Houston Botanic Garden

The Houston Botanic Garden is an educational destination that comprises eight different areas. These areas include the Global Collection Garden, Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden, Culinary Garden, Pine Grove, Community Garden, Woodland Glade, Stormwater Wetlands, and Coastal Prairie. The Garden is spread across 132 acres and offers two-and-a-half miles of walking and hiking trails, a lagoon, and a nature play area for children.

This Garden is unique in that it contains over 3,000 different plant species, some of which have never been seen in Houston. The collection gardens showcase plants from tropical, subtropical, and arid regions from all around the world. These plants are interwoven throughout the Garden’s undulating topography and artful pathways. The Garden was created from a former golf course and transformed from a monoculture of lawns, sand traps, and mature trees to a distinctly diverse landscape.

The design and contracting team worked for a year, experimenting with sacrificial cover crops and biological amendments to restructure the compacted and degraded soil. After rehabilitating the existing soil, they blended horticultural soils in intricate profile ratios to support the expansive plant and tree palette. The contracting team also partnered with local craftspeople to deliver intricate detailing, utilizing materials in unprecedented ways. The Garden features ornate botanic-themed metalwork, custom thin-shell vaults for shade, and hand-crafted ceramics, masonry, and woodwork, all fabricated locally, which gives it a unique spirit of place.