Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota County, Florida

Photograph: Interior view - Marie Selby Botanical Gardens - Sarasota, Florida - DSC00855.jpg by Daderot · CC0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Sarasota County attraction

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

Sarasota County · Gulf Coast

Fifteen acres on Sarasota Bay, the only botanical garden in the world devoted to epiphytes, the plants that grow on other plants.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Marie Selby left her bayfront property to the public when she died, and the gardens opened on July 7, 1975. The downtown campus has grown from seven acres to nearly fifteen, still built around the Selby house and the banyan grove she and her husband William planted the better part of a century ago. What sets it apart is the specialty. This is the only botanical garden anywhere dedicated to displaying and studying epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, gesneriads and ferns, the plants that live in the branches of other plants rather than in soil. Eight greenhouses stand behind the public areas, and research centers for bromeliads, gesneriads and orchids work on the collection. The Tropical Conservatory is open to visitors. In 2020 the gardens took on a second campus, the 30-acre Historic Spanish Point at Osprey. Together the two draw over 200,000 people a year, and the downtown gardens sit within walking distance of the Sarasota bayfront

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

MOVING TO SARASOTA COUNTY?Fourteen services. One business each.

Attorneys, movers, insurance, title companies, roofers and nine more — one listed business per service in Sarasota County.

See local help in Sarasota County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Sarasota County.

Back to Sarasota County