The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is just one of the amazingly beautiful parks and outdoor recreational facilities in and around the city. Botanic gardens tend to be one of the significant geographic representative features of most cities and this is no different with the one in Santa Barbara. Most of the horticultural offerings found there are as beautiful as is the city itself. In addition, many tourists visit the garden and are frequently surprised by the diverse plant life it houses. Most of those same people don’t expect coastal cities to have such an extensive plant life, when all they can imagine before their arrival at one of the great hotelst is sandy beaches and gorgeous waves.
Not only is the botanic garden meant to display the beautiful flowers and other regional plant life to visitors, it is a scientific and educational institution and has a strong relevance to the city. They maintain a strong focus on developing new generations of wilderness stewards and are progressive in their approach to the future of wild plant life. The emphasis is on plants that are native to California and they research ways of preserving this natural heritage.
The garden is also one of the city’s historic institutions. It was originally founded in 1925 when the Carnegie Institution initiated a collaborative project with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The plan was to follow a vision of establishing a botanic garden that would stretch from the ocean to the edge of mountains. It would be connected by a steady path of flowers, plants, trees and scrubs, all representing their place in this great earth. The garden has become part of the city’s rich heritage in culture and architecture and a partnership was established in 2003 County of Santa Barbara Historic Landmarks Commission that would grant certain areas and facilities to the garden.
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