Orchid Conservatory, Foster Botanical Garden

Foster Botanical Garden goes back to 1853, when Queen Kalama leased a parcel to the German physician and botanist William Hillebrand; he built his home there and planted trees, some of which still stand. In 1884 Thomas and Mary Foster bought the property and made it their residence. When she died in 1930, Mary Foster left the land and her house to the City and County of Honolulu on condition that it be kept as a public park; the garden opened to the public in 1931. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. According to the English Wikipedia article, its first director, Harold Lyon, started the orchid collection.

For the glasshouse, the official garden map (2019 edition) labels it the Orchid Conservatory and shows a Conservatory workshop beside it; the City's page lists it, as the Conservatory, among the garden's highlights.

Two recent episodes are documented. In 2023 the whole garden closed on 13 February for an accessibility project (entrance, restrooms, community garden, paths) and did not reopen until 14 August: the City explained the extended closure by a historic wall near the Conservatory and buried utilities at the entrance. On 30 January 2025 the Honolulu Botanical Gardens then presented a "newly reimagined" Conservatory.

A 2010 photograph on Wikimedia Commons shows the entrance: a hall with a white-painted metal frame, its pitched roof and walls made of translucent panels, with an entrance canopy carried on posts and a pair of glazed doors. Under the roof, pale cloths appear to serve as shading. A 2020 snapshot shows the glasshouse from afar at the end of a lawn, with a low metal-roofed building beside it that seems to match the Conservatory workshop on the official map.

In OpenStreetMap the building is tagged as a greenhouse; its irregular outline covers about 290 m² and measures some thirty metres at its longest (an indicative, unofficial measurement). The official map places it near the garden's gift shop, next to the Butterfly Garden, and draws it as several joined volumes.

The official map names the building the Orchid Conservatory; the City's page simply speaks of the Conservatory. A 2020 travel guide describes it as an indoor greenhouse featuring an array of tropical flowers and plants, and its author saw orchids there. A photo caption published by the City shows a visitor looking at a carnivorous pitcher plant in the Orchid Conservatory during a guided tour. In August 2026 the garden's account invited visitors to come and see all the colours and shapes inside.

These plants should be told apart from other collections in the garden: the Lyon Orchid Garden, on the other side of the grounds according to the travel guide, and a Hybrid Orchids area that the official map places near the offices; Wikipedia also mentions a Hybrid Orchid Display. The City does state that the garden holds hundreds of species of tropical plants, trees and flowers.

The glasshouse stands in the Butterfly Garden area, the outdoor butterfly garden that the City's page lists as another highlight. On the official map it sits between the gift shop and the nursery, which is closed to the public. No separate admission is mentioned: it is visited with the garden.

The City offers free guided tours of about 90 minutes led by docents, at 10:30 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays (Thursdays have been added since March 2026), with booking recommended. A room, the Conservatory Classroom, hosted documentary screenings in September 2026. The garden recommends the glasshouse for a rainy day; Chinatown, on the garden's edge, and the neighbouring Kuan Yin Temple can be added to the outing.