Houston Botanic Garden

Conceived over thirty years ago by a small constituency of local Houstonians, an island in the city’s expansive Bayou system has been expertly cultivated and re-imagined as Houston’s first botanic garden. A world-class, ‘only-in-Houston’ experience in the Bayou City, the project includes the first phases of the Garden and a phased, experimental, and resilient 132-hectare master plan with dedicated implementation strategies that unfolds over the next 20-30 years.

Embracing the qualities of its location on a fluctuating waterway, the former golf course site required a completely balanced design that mitigates between elevating the new gardens and permanent structures out of the 100-year floodplain as well as managing, protecting, and enhancing the experience of the bayou. Within the first phases of realization, the design team developed a mechanism to passively rehabilitate the clay soils of the bayou waterways through a series of sacrificial cover crops and experimental spore treatments, creating a robust well-structured medium to support a diverse cross-section of plants from all over the world. This framework is a fundamental backbone of the design approach, serving the Garden for years to come.

Houston Botanic Garden opened to the public during the Pandemic and included: The Global Collection Garden incorporates three climatic zones— arid, subtropical, and tropical; the Family Discovery Garden utilizes the existing topography to exhibit a wild and engaging landscape for children, and lastly, the Culinary Garden features a rich, diverse selection of edible and medicinal flora, three water walls made out of 3,591 custom jade tiles. In addition, an array of custom-designed and carefully placed features supplement the character of the Garden, including the Welcome Fountain, a living water display of discarded coral stone; the colonnade of 21, thin-shell concrete vaults to provide shade from the Texan sun, and monumental steel ornamental gates with a botanic motif.