Albert's Greenhouse

Went a couple weekends ago to the San Francisco Botanic Garden at Strybing Arboretum. That's a mouthful right there. It was one of the first really sunny Saturdays of the year, and this made parking difficult. With all the new museums there in recent years, it's been necessary to get to the park before 9am on a weekend to have any hope of finding parking.

There are many things of botanical interest in the park, including some rainforest displays at the California Academy of Sciences, the always interesting Conservatory of Flowers, and of course the Botanical Garden. The SFBG is the only one of the three with no lines and free admission, though I hear that is planned to change.



Strybing has several excellent collections - I like their South African and South American Cloud Forest gardens a lot. They're well situated in an area which almost never freezes, and doesn't really get very hot except a couple days a year. Spring and Fall are probably the best times as this part of San Francisco can be covered in fog in the summer - a welcome respite from the heat further south. This allows them to grow some things that will not grow anywhere else in California.



Strybing has a really great philosophy about plant sales - they try to propagate most of their collection and hold monthly sales which are relatively low-key to distribute the plants. You can pick up California natives, cloud forest plants, rare passionflowers, and alpines to name just a few of the choices. Their yearly Spring Sale is a lot bigger, a lot more crowded, and a lot more hectic - but they say they have around 20,000 plants available there.