Virginia Haldan Tropical House (University of California Botanical Garden)

The University of California Botanical Garden was founded in 1890 by E. L. Greene near Haviland Hall, on the north side of the Berkeley campus. Its first conservatory, built in 1894 by Lord and Burnham for 16,000 dollars, was demolished in 1924, and the following year the garden moved to its present site in Strawberry Canyon under the direction of Thomas Harper Goodspeed.

The sources consulted do not give the construction date of the present Tropical House; the garden says only that it had been a well-loved destination for fifty years when it closed in 2020. That year its exterior was reskinned, and the garden went on to raise the funds needed to complete a reimagined interior designed by the landscape architect Ron Lutsko of Lutsko Associates. The brief called for a larger pond, better circulation for visitors and closer contact with the plants. Wikipedia dates the renovation to 2024, the year in which the garden published its page presenting the reopened house.

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association gave the project its Garden and Landscape award, praising a sensitive restoration that, in its words, 'preserves the spirit of the original building while expanding its capacity to inspire'. The house now bears the name Virginia Haldan Tropical House.

The garden describes the Tropical House as the only tropical glass house open to the public in the East Bay. It stands some 150 metres south of the visitor center, beside the conference center and apart from the group formed by the Arid House and the Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous Plant House. The 2020 works replaced its outer skin; the sources consulted name neither the original builder nor the dimensions or materials.

Inside, Ron Lutsko's design is organised around an enlarged pond with a fountain and a two-sided living wall, conceived to illustrate the evolution of land plants, while the paths were redrawn to improve the flow of visitors. The volume is tall enough for a Ravenala madagascariensis to reach the top of the house; a climber, Strongylodon macrobotrys, is trained up the north side, and a Coccothrinax argentata palm stands at the north-west corner. The atmosphere is warm and humid. The heritage association's award stressed that the intervention kept the character of the original building.

Like all the garden's collections, the plants in the house are research plants, available for study. The new planting makes room for tropical cycads long kept out of sight in the research greenhouses, among them Cycas multipinnata, shown to the public for the first time; the garden holds one of the most comprehensive cycad collections of any botanical garden. The Ravenala madagascariensis, an old favourite, survived the building works, and Macleanea pentaptera, an epiphytic shrub from the humid montane forests of Ecuador, climbs the Coccothrinax argentata.

The enlarged pond holds flowering water plants such as Nymphaea caerulea, the subject of an anthropology student's research. A Huperzia grows on the living wall, where staff plan to replace common nursery plants with species from the collections, from tropical mosses to Nepenthes. Plants used by people, such as chocolate and vanilla, are to complete the display; Wikipedia also lists the giant corpse lily, Amorphophallus, among its curiosities.

The house is part of the University of California Botanical Garden at 200 Centennial Drive, in Strawberry Canyon, Berkeley. It combines naturally with the garden's two other glasshouses: the Arid House, devoted to cacti and succulents, and the Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous Plant House, whose display rotates constantly.

The visit can continue through the outdoor collections, for example the Cycad and Palm Garden, the Garden of Old Roses, the Chinese Medicinal Herb Garden and the Crops of the World Garden. The planting of the Tropical House is still being refined, particularly on the living wall.