Bring your cameras over to the picturesque Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota. There you'll find beautiful gardens, a Southern Colonial mansion-turned-museum gallery, a plant shop, and a café, among many other garden pleasures and exhibits!
Feel like you're in Asia while you walk through the Bamboo Garden and visit the colorful koi pond. Take a walk on the wild side and visit the Wild Things exhibit of poison dart frogs. Fellow gardeners and horticulturalists will take delight in the Selby Herbarium, a display of over 94,000 dried and pressed specimens from around the world. Stroll through the Mangrove Forest that will bring you to the little dock out on Sarasota Bay. And of course, take some time to simply relax in 9.5 acres of beautiful, natural fresh air and flowers.
Make sure you bring the kids along to enjoy their share of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. They'll love the They'll love the children's learning center, an indoor rainforest filled with creepy crawly insects and hands on exhibits. Certain gardens will also pique their fancy, like the Butterfly Garden, the Tropical Food Garden, and the Fragrance Garden.
Give yourself and your family a few hours to truly relish the beauty and education offered at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. And before you leave, rest your feet by Sarasota Bay for more beautiful garden views!
The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida is a not-for-profit institution fostering understanding and appreciation of tropical plants, especially epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants), through programs of research, conservation, education and display. Selby Gardens is perhaps best known for its living collection of more than 6,000 orchids.
The 9.5-acre bayfront property is an open-air and under-glass museum of more than 20,000 colorful plants, many collected in the wild on over 150 scientific expeditions to tropical rain forests by Selby Gardens research staff.
Throughout the grounds of the historic Selby estate are many distinct garden areas, including the Tropical Display House with its lush rain forest atmosphere, the towering Bamboo Pavilion, Banyan Grove, Cactus and Succulent Garden and Cycad Collection. Also on the grounds is the former Christy Payne Mansion, a unique example of eclectic Southern Colonial architecture.
Children will delight in our indoor "rainforest," brilliant dart frog collection, and our gardens abundant with tropical flora and fauna. More than 150 scientific expeditions to rainforests around the world have contributed to our collection of more than 20,000 living plants, truly a wonder to see!