Huntington Desert Garden Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Huntington Desert Garden
Mature Golden Barrel cacti with columnar ceroid cacti from South America
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Type	Public
Location	San Marino, California
Nearest city	San Marino, California
Area	10 acres (4.0 ha)
Created	1900 (1900)s
Status	Open year round

The Huntington Desert Garden is a special part of The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. It's one of the biggest and oldest collections of cacti, succulents, and other desert plants from all over the world.

This amazing garden has plants that can live in very tough, dry places. Many of these plants were collected by Henry E. Huntington and William Hertrich, who was the garden's first manager. They traveled to many countries in North, Central, and South America to find them.

When it started in the early 1900s, many of these desert plants were not well-known. But the Desert Garden helped people learn about them. Today, it has over 5,000 different kinds of plants across 10 acres (4 hectares). It is still one of the best desert gardens in the world!

Did you know that Mr. Huntington didn't even like cacti at first? He had some bad experiences with prickly pear cacti while building railroads. But William Hertrich kept trying to convince him. Once Mr. Huntington agreed, he even built a special train track to the garden! This track helped bring in rocks, soil, and plants by the train car. It was very helpful to have a train track and lots of money when building such a big garden! In 1908, one trip to Arizona brought back enough plants to fill three train cars.

A famous landscape designer from Brazil, Roberto Burle Marx, once called the Huntington Desert Garden "the most extraordinary garden in the world."

What You'll Find in the Desert Garden
Desert Garden Gallery
See also

What You'll Find in the Desert Garden

The Huntington Desert Garden has many different types of desert plants. Some of the most important groups include:

Agave plants and similar types
Aloe plants
Terrestrial bromeliads (plants that grow on the ground)
Cacti
Echeveria, crassula, sedum, and other succulents
Euphorbia plants
Fouquieria plants
Caudiciforms (plants with thick, swollen stems)

Amazing Agaves and Yuccas

The garden's collections of agave and yucca plants, along with the cacti, are very important for plant research. The Huntington has the largest Yucca filifera in the world!

You can also see Beaucarnea plants, often called Ponytail "Palms." These are actually part of the agave family, not true palm trees. Some of these are very old and were among the first plants put in the Desert Garden.

Aloes from Africa

The Huntington has one of the biggest collections of Aloes outside of Africa. The Aloe arborescens puts on a beautiful show in winter with its bright red flowers. About 200 of the world's 300 aloe species live in the upper part of the garden. Most of them come from southern Africa. The Aloidendron barberae (also known as Aloe bainesii) is the tallest, growing up to fifty feet high!

Colorful Puyas

Puyas are a type of bromeliad that grows on the ground. They create a spectacular display of flowers in April and early May.

Tall Columnar Cacti

Most of the tall, column-shaped plants in the desert garden are from the Cereus group. They form a big part of the garden's look. They produce flowers in late summer and colorful fruit in September and October.

The Cereus xanthocarpus is the heaviest plant in the garden, weighing about twenty tons! This tree-like cactus was already very big when it was planted in 1905. It is now about 125 years old.

Golden Barrel Cacti

One of the most amazing sights is the group of 500 bright yellow-spined Golden Barrel Cacti (Echinocactus grusonii). The largest ones are more than 85 years old! They flower in the spring and are originally from central Mexico. This is probably the best collection of Golden Barrels anywhere in the world.

Crassula Family Plants

The crassula family includes succulents with fleshy leaves, mostly found in Mexico and Africa. In the cool autumn, their leaves turn beautiful pastel colors. This includes plants like aeonium, echeveria, kalanchoe, pachyphytum, and sedum.

African Spurge Plants

In the African section of the Desert Garden, you'll see tall, cactus-like plants called succulent spurges (Euphorbia). These plants have a milky sap that can be irritating. Most of the species in the garden come from South Africa and East Africa. The Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia milii), a common house plant, is a spiny plant from Madagascar that has colorful flowers all year.

Unusual Boojum Trees

The strange-looking boojum trees (Fouquieria columnaris) are rare and unusual plants from Baja California. The more common ocotillo (F. splendens) is found in the California section. The main garden area also has many other fouquieria plants from Mexico with bright red flowers for most of the year.

Living Stones

The garden has the largest collection of "living stones" in America. These are small plants from southern Africa that belong to the genus Lithops. They look just like pebbles or small stones!

Caudiciform Plants

The collection of caudiciform plants is also very special. These plants have very thick stems that can look like twisted sweet potatoes. This thick stem, called a caudex, stores water for the plant. The garden has a huge Dioscorea elephantipes plant, which is a great example of a caudiciform.

Desert Garden Gallery

Aloe marlothii in bloom, with Ceiba speciosa and euphorbia
Creeping Devils (Stenocereus eruca), with Fouquieria and barrel cacti
A group of mature Golden Barrels (Echinocactus grusonii) showing their distinctive clustering habit. The Golden Barrel collection at the Huntington may be the finest in the world.
Golden Barrels with Senecio mandraliscae, Blue Stick or Blue Finger succulents
Aloe saponaria (Zebra or African aloe) and Blue Stick succulents (Senecio mandraliscae), showing pathways and garden layout and design.
Borzicactus websteramus and other, related columnar Cleistocactus species