Claremont’s California Botanic Garden

The California Botanic Garden is a hidden gem within the city of Claremont. I say this because I only learned of this place recently and it’s such a nice find. I doubt many people are aware of this garden but I suppose this is a lie since the garden holds an annual holiday event here that’s quite popular (and on the expensive side) and when I visited the garden, there were a decent amount of people present. Not busy but not empty either.

Prior to visiting the California Botanic Garden, I read great online reviews of this place as well as not so great reviews, such as complaints on how dry this garden was and how it wasn’t worth the admission price. I wasn’t sure how to take this but I figured it would be worth the visit anyway.

The garden was great. The dryness that was mentioned in reviews were pretty much unfounded, although I think I understand why dryness was mentioned. The California Botanic Garden focuses on plants native to the state of California. Therefore, if someone is seeking to gawk at non-native plants, this garden is going to come off very dry.

There’s a cactus area. There’s an area that resembles Lancaster’s plants. These types of plants are “dry” plants.

There were also areas that didn’t look special, but were a part of the garden. Plants that looked like a bunch of shrubbery that probably weren’t just shrubbery but what do I know?

If we focus on those specific things, the rest of the garden ends up being overlooked.

The garden is quite vast and has a lot of places you can explore. If you’re not careful, you can miss out on a lot of nice plants, forms of water, art and even animals.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone were to come across big wildlife here but what I saw were butterflies, beautiful birds I’d never seen before, gray squirrels and a lizard.

If I had more time, I would have stayed longer and explored the garden a bit more.

For those that like to touch and smell things, they even offer a sensory loop where you can smell things like sage. There was something I was trying to smell but couldn’t get a whiff of it for some reason. (I can’t recall what plant this was but it was a flop within the sensory loop!)

I recommend this hidden gem if you’re ever near the city of Claremont.

**Click HERE to watch my video of the California Botanic Garden!**