Mobile Botanical Gardens Facts for Kids

The Mobile Botanical Gardens started in 1974. You can find them on Museum Drive in the Spring Hill area of Mobile, Alabama, in the United States. It's a great place to explore plants and nature!

What You Can See at the Gardens
Visiting the Gardens
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What You Can See at the Gardens

The gardens cover about 100 acres (which is like 75 football fields!). It's a mix of special garden areas and natural wild spaces. Some of the cool places to visit include the Rhododendron Garden, the Camellia Wintergarden, the Fern Glade, and a garden where you can smell and touch plants. There's also a Japanese Maple Garden, an Herb garden, and a large Longleaf Pine forest that's about 40 acres big.

The Rhododendron Garden

This garden has about 1,000 different types of rhododendrons and azaleas. These plants were put in place in 2006, updating an older garden. You can see many special collections here, like Encore, Harris, and Southern Indica azaleas. This is the biggest collection of rhododendrons along the Gulf Coast!

The Camellia Wintergarden

The Camellia Wintergarden was created in 2007. It has 500 camellia plants! Many of them were planted recently, but some are over 30 years old. Camellias are beautiful flowers that often bloom in winter.

The Longleaf Pine Habitat

This part of the gardens is a special forest. It's a small piece of the huge longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests that used to cover the southern United States. This habitat is full of different plants and trees. In 2007, experts found 49 different plant families and 159 different plant types here! It's a very important place for nature.

Visiting the Gardens

The Mobile Botanical Gardens is a non-profit organization. This means they get most of their money from donations, grants, selling plants, and people buying memberships. The gardens are open all year, from when the sun comes up until it goes down. It costs $5 for adults to get in, but kids aged 12 and under can enter for free!