Missouri Botanical Garden

Henry Shaw came to St. Louis from England as a young man and made a fortune in the hardware and trade business of a booming frontier city, retiring wealthy while still fairly young. Inspired by the great gardens of Europe, especially the royal botanic gardens at Kew, he resolved to create a public botanical garden for St. Louis, and in the 1850s he opened his grounds to the public, laying the foundation for the institution that still bears the state's name.

Shaw did not simply build a pleasure garden. He endowed it, tied it to serious scientific work, and arranged for it to continue after his death, ensuring it would be both a place of beauty and a center of learning. His original country estate house, a handsome nineteenth-century residence, still stands on the grounds, and Shaw himself is buried in a mausoleum on the property he loved.

The garden's most famous landmark is the Climatron, a geodesic dome built in the 1960s in the visionary style associated with the engineer Buckminster Fuller. Beneath its clear panels grows a self-contained tropical rainforest, with towering plants, waterfalls, and warm, humid air, so that stepping inside on a St. Louis winter day feels like walking into the jungle. It was a landmark of both horticulture and architecture when it opened, and it remains a wonder.

Around the Climatron, other glasshouses and conservatories shelter specialized collections, from desert plants to delicate orchids. Together they let the garden grow and display species from climates all over the world, and they support the conservation work of keeping rare and endangered plants alive. For visitors, they mean there is always something green and blooming to see, no matter the season outside.

Among the garden's many themed areas, the Japanese garden is a special favorite, one of the largest of its kind in North America. Built around a lake with islands, bridges, stone lanterns, and carefully placed rocks and plantings, it is designed as a strolling garden meant to be experienced slowly, revealing new compositions at every turn. Koi glide in the water, and the scene shifts beautifully with the seasons.

Beyond it lie rose gardens, a woodland garden, a children's garden, formal European-style gardens, and more, spread across grounds large enough to spend a full day exploring. The variety is the point: the garden gathers the plant life and garden traditions of the world into one place, so a single visit can carry you from a tropical dome to a formal parterre to a quiet Japanese lakeside.

Behind the beauty, the Missouri Botanical Garden is one of the world's leading centers of plant science. Its researchers travel the globe to document and study plants, maintaining vast collections of specimens and databases used by botanists everywhere, and leading efforts to conserve species threatened by habitat loss. That research mission, dating back to Shaw's original vision, sets the garden apart from an ordinary public park.

Every season brings a different face. Spring explodes with bulbs and flowering trees, summer fills the outdoor gardens with color, fall lights the woodland and Japanese gardens, and winter draws visitors indoors to the glasshouses and to seasonal events like garden lantern festivals and holiday light displays. Whenever you come, there is something in bloom or on display, indoors or out.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.