Dickinson Family Education Conservatory (San Diego Botanic Garden)

San Diego Botanic Garden occupies the former Encinitas estate of Ruth Baird Larabee, given to San Diego County in 1957. A foundation set up in 1961 led to the opening of Quail Botanic Gardens in March 1970, renamed San Diego Botanic Garden in 2009. Across 37 acres (15 ha) the garden displays more than 5,000 plant species and varieties, fifteen themed regional gardens, twelve demonstration gardens and the largest public bamboo collection in North America.

The education conservatory got under way thanks to an initial $1 million challenge grant from the Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation, after which the building is named. By early 2018 the frame was already being raised by crane next to the children's garden and the glass was on its way from Belgium, with completion then hoped for within the year; the San Diego Horticultural Society's newsletter announced a 9,000-square-foot structure. The conservatory was finally unveiled to the public for the 2019 holiday season, in time for Botanic Wonderland, the event it hosts throughout December, and the American Public Gardens Association presented it to its members on 4 December 2019. The garden's president, Ari Novy, saw it as a resource for every age group in San Diego County and a tool for conserving critically endangered plants. Staff and volunteers had nursed many of the plants for years in anticipation of the expansion; in January 2020 the director of horticulture, Tony Gurnoe, celebrated the opening as a collective achievement.

The conservatory is a glass volume 30 feet (about 9 m) high and 8,232 square feet (765 m²) in area, designed by Green House Works of Kansas City with the San Diego practices Daneen Powell Atelier and domusstudio. Its steel frame, described as one of a kind, carries glass panels made by Deforche, a Belgian company specialising in botanical conservatories, and shipped from Europe. Tony Gurnoe sums up the intent: make the glasshouse the dominant feature of the landscape and dissolve the perceived boundary between inside and out. Roll-up and accordion glass doors run around the perimeter, and cascading glass doors open the main-hall classroom onto the planted space.

An automated control system runs the climate, linking the doors, roof vents, fans and ceiling shades; a reverse-osmosis fog system adds humidity and a boiler-fed radiant floor warms the ground. Of the 8,232 square feet, 5,292 go to the large planted hall with its 15-foot living wall and 3,291 to classrooms and meeting rooms, a catering kitchen, an office and restrooms. The classroom inside the hall can be closed off and climate-controlled on its own; the second, fitted with a teaching kitchen, opens westward onto an outdoor amphitheatre of 3,512 square feet seating 265.

The conservatory lets the garden grow tropical species it could not keep outdoors. Two rarities stand as its emblems: Wollemia nobilis, a critically endangered Australian conifer known only from fossils until a remnant population was found in 1994, and Magnolia lanuginosa from north-eastern India, presumed extinct and unrecorded for more than a century before its recent rediscovery. Rare and endangered palms, cycads, Ficus and magnolias grow around four bioretention and filtration basins, with fragrant Plumeria and bromeliads along the edges.

Most of the plants are epiphytes that never touch soil: bromeliads, aroids, orchids, Begonia and Plumeria fill six floating islands, a giant living wall and plant chandeliers of wood and stainless steel that mimic the canopy these plants naturally inhabit. Hoists lower them to ground level for close viewing or raise them towards the ceiling to clear the hall for a class, a meeting or a wedding. Some of the plants were gifts from colleagues at other institutions.

The conservatory stands next to the Hamilton Children's Garden within a 37-acre garden that deserves half a day for its fifteen regional gardens, demonstration gardens and bamboo collection. Allow half an hour for the glasshouse itself, more when the plant chandeliers have been lowered to eye level. In December the garden's holiday event, Botanic Wonderland, uses the decorated conservatory as its setting; at other times it may be booked for weddings or meetings. Some forty kilometres to the south, the lath-built Botanical Building in San Diego's Balboa Park makes a historic counterpoint.