Horridge Conservatory (Matthew Horridge Memorial Conservatory), University of Rhode Island

The conservatory is named after Matthew Horridge, a University of Rhode Island botany student who died unexpectedly in 2003. According to a university article of 21 January 2010, it was "renovated and designed by friends" of the student; the space is then described as "the third large greenhouse" of the complex, at the corner of Upper College Road and Flagg Road. It receives botany classes and elementary-school groups, and drawing students come to sketch the plants. A titan arum acquired in July was expected to flower there in spring 2011.

A blog describes the conservatory as made up of greenhouses 112 and 113, two of the seventeen glasshouses of the range. Next door, the university's gardens began as the Learning Landscape in 1991 or 1992, and were renamed in 2003. In April 2025 the university launched a geographic database of its collections. In June 2026 a titan arum nicknamed Morticia flowered: the official page notes the bloom on 16 June, the press describes the public peak on Wednesday 17 June, with more than 4,000 visitors, waits of up to four hours and a livestream watched nearly 650,000 times, a university record. The previous bloom dated back more than a decade.

According to a blog about the gardens, the conservatory consists of greenhouses nos. 112 and 113, two of the university's seventeen glasshouses; the official page gives 15,000 square feet (about 1,400 m²) of greenhouse space for the whole range, with laboratories, a classroom and a growth-chamber room. In 2010 the university placed the complex at the corner of Upper College Road and Flagg Road, with an entrance from Upper College Road, and noted that two neighbouring glasshouses were used for research.

The photographs on the official page (2026) show glasshouses with pitched roofs and clear glazing divided by slender metal bars, with fans hanging beneath the cover. Inside, smooth paths cross beds planted in the ground, a pool edged with rocks and flagstones beside a red bench, and a desert bed with a barrel cactus. OpenStreetMap traces the row at 6 Greenhouse Road and eight individual unnamed glasshouses: the conservatory's exact place within the row is not identified.

The university describes an "ecologically diverse" collection of species from tropical, desert and temperate environments around the world. The 2010 article details its areas: a desert environment (cactus, agaves, palms, succulents), a display of tropical food crops (banana, fig, olive, coffee, papaya, pomegranate), a water garden with fish and a bog garden of mostly native carnivorous plants donated by the Rhode Island Carnivorous Plant Society. All the plants are labelled. In January 2010 a bird of paradise, a pink powder puff, a Brazilian orchid and a succulent from the African desert were among those in flower.

The titan arum, native to Sumatra, was described in 2010 as perhaps the most famous plant in the collection; in 2026 a Rhode Island Current commentary mentions three titan arums in the conservatory. Collection figures vary: more than 1,000 plants catalogued (official page, covering the conservatory, the gardens and the Youngken medicinal garden), 1,200 species and cultivars (university, 2025), more than 1,200 specimens (press, 2026).

The conservatory stands at 6 Greenhouse Road in Kingston, on the university campus; the official page says it is open to visitors on weekdays and closed on holidays. The hours shown vary from one university page to another (opening time, visits by appointment in 2025) and are extended during exceptional blooms, so checking before travelling is wise.

The university's gardens, 4.5 acres behind the glasshouse complex and near the Mallon Outreach Center, round out the visit: they are free, open from sunrise to sunset and kept by the Rhode Island Master Gardeners and university staff, with more than 1,000 species. Parking is free after 5 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends, according to the gardens page.