Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Type	Botanical garden
Location	Sarasota, Florida
Area	15 acres (6.1 ha)


The Christie Payne Mansion, home of the Museum of Botany and the Arts
U.S. National Register of Historic Places


Lua error in Module:Location_map at line 420: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
Location	Sarasota, Florida
Architectural style	Colonial Revival
NRHP reference No.	98001201
Added to NRHP	September 25, 1998

The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is a big, beautiful botanical garden in Sarasota, Florida. It covers about 15 acres (6 hectares) and is located right on the water, next to Sarasota Bay. This amazing garden used to be the home of Marie and William Selby.

It's a special place where scientists study plants, especially those that grow on other plants, like orchids and bromeliads. You can explore many different types of plants here, learn about nature, and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.

Amazing Plants and Gardens
- Children's Rainforest Garden
Special Plant Collections and Research Centers
Selby Gardens Research Library
- What You Can Find in the Library
Selby Botanical Gardens Press
Support for the Gardens
Gallery
See also

Amazing Plants and Gardens

The Selby Gardens are home to over 20,000 living plants! This includes more than 5,500 orchids and 3,500 bromeliads. These plants are carefully looked after and studied by botanists, who are plant scientists.

The Gardens also have a special collection of dried and preserved plants called an herbarium. There's even a huge collection of flowers kept in special liquids. Scientists from Selby Gardens have traveled all over the world, discovering more than 2,000 plant species that were new to science!

You can see many different types of plants here, such as:

Giant banyan trees
Tall bamboo
Old live oaks
Many kinds of palms
Mangroves that grow in salty water
Succulents (plants that store water)
Colorful wildflowers
Ancient cycads

There's also a fun butterfly garden, a garden full of sweet-smelling plants, and a garden where you can see plants that we eat. Don't forget to visit the koi pond, where you can watch colorful fish swim!

Children's Rainforest Garden

One of the coolest spots for kids is the Ann Goldstein Children's Rainforest Garden. It's designed to help young people learn about and love rainforest plants. It's an interactive area where you can explore and discover.

Special Plant Collections and Research Centers

The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens has several important areas dedicated to studying and preserving plants.

Bromeliad Identification Center

The Mulford B. Foster Bromeliad Identification Center was started in 1979. It's named after Mulford Foster, who was a famous collector of bromeliads. This center helps people identify different kinds of bromeliads and learn about them. It has lots of information and photos of over 2,800 species!

Greenhouses Full of Plants

The Greenhouse areas at Selby Gardens are like giant plant homes. They hold over 10,500 different plants from more than 600 plant groups. This includes 4,900 orchids, 3,600 bromeliads, and many other interesting plants like ferns.

Outdoor Gardens

The outdoor Gardens have about 2,300 different tropical and subtropical plants. These plants come from all over the world and represent about 1,200 different species. Many of them were collected directly from their natural homes.

The Herbarium

The Herbarium is a special collection of about 106,000 dried plant specimens. Most of these are from tropical areas, especially plants that grow on other plants (epiphytes). It's like a library of preserved plants that scientists can study.

Orchid Identification Center

The Orchid Identification Center was created in 1975. Its main job is to study and identify wild and cultivated orchids. It has a huge collection of over 20,000 files, photos, and 24,000 orchid specimens preserved in liquid.

Christy Payne House: Museum of Botany and the Arts

The Christy Payne House is a beautiful old building that now holds the Museum of Botany and the Arts. This museum has changing exhibits of amazing botanical art and photography. The house itself is very important historically and was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

The Research Library

The Research Library at Selby Gardens has about 124,000 books and other materials. It focuses on tropical plants, especially epiphytes. It even has a collection of rare books from the late 1700s! Scientists and plant lovers use this library for their research.

The Spirit Collection

The Spirit Collection is a unique collection of almost 28,000 small bottles filled with flowers preserved in liquid. It's the second-largest collection of its kind in the world! Most of the vials contain orchid flowers, but there are also many gesneriads and bromeliads.

Selby Gardens Research Library

The Selby Gardens Research Library is a very important part of the Gardens. It started in 1973, even before the Gardens opened to the public. Many scientists from all over the world visit this library because it has such a great collection of botanical research materials.

What You Can Find in the Library

Main library collection: This part has about 7,000 books about plant ecology, how plants are classified (systematic botany), and how people use plants (ethnobotany).
Rare Books: This collection has over 500 very old books, some more than 200 years old! You can see a copy of Curtis’ Botanical Magazine from 1788 here. You need an appointment and a librarian to see these special books.
Serials: This includes over 310 different magazines and journals about plants and gardening.
Botanical Prints: These are beautiful old pictures of plants. They are part of the Rare Books collection and are usually not open to the public.
You can also find blueprints, slides, and CDs in the main library.
Microfiche collection: This has over 141 titles, including hard-to-find information about orchidaceae.

The library is open on Mondays (9 AM to 12 PM) and Fridays (1 PM to 4 PM). Anyone can visit, but you need to make an appointment first. You can't check out books if you're a member of the public, but members and volunteers can borrow books and journals for two weeks.

Selby Botanical Gardens Press

The Selby Botanical Gardens Press is like a publishing company for the Gardens. They publish a scientific journal called Selbyana – The Journal of The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. This journal comes out twice a year and shares new research about tropical plants, especially epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants). They also publish botanical books, guides, and posters.

Support for the Gardens

In 2018, the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation gave the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens a big grant of $2 million. This money helps the Gardens with their plans to become even more environmentally friendly and sustainable for the future.