Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Conservatory

The garden's site bears the imprint of two Richmond figures. In 1895 businessman Lewis Ginter bought nine acres on Lakeside Lake and let colleagues set up the Lakeside Wheel Club there, a short-lived destination for cyclists. After his death in 1897, his niece Grace Arents bought the abandoned club in 1911 and turned it into a convalescent home for sick children, then into her own residence, named Bloemendaal ('valley of flowers'). When she died in 1926 she left the property to the city for a public park and botanical garden in her uncle's memory. The plan only took shape in the early 1980s, when citizens formed Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, chartered in 1984.

The conservatory was completed in 2003 with support from the Gottwald family, who dedicated it to the memory of Anne Cobb Gottwald. For more than a decade it hosted the seasonal 'Butterflies LIVE!' exhibition.

Under the THRIVE campaign, with a $31 million goal, the garden launched a major expansion. The butterfly exhibit was paused in 2024 and 2025, its insects sent to Tucson Botanical Gardens for the duration of the works. The enlarged conservatory, nearly doubled in size, opened to the public together with 7.5 acres of new gardens on 23 May 2026.

The 2003 building uses the classical language of the glass palace: a central Dome House under a 63-foot (about 19 m) dome, with flanking wings. The 2026 expansion reorganises it around an atrium serving four distinct climate houses: desert, Mediterranean, subtropical and tropical rainforest, the last of these on two levels.

The subtropical house contains the permanent butterfly house, designed with a water feature, an upper level reached by stairs or lift for a view from above, and an observation window onto the behind-the-scenes rearing area. The Richmond firm 3North led the overall design, Prospiant supplied the conservatory glass, Timmons Group was the engineer and Hourigan the general contractor. Arizona-based designer Catalina LaFrance created the planting of the Desert House.

The conservatory displays palms, cycads, orchids, tropical plants, cacti and succulents year-round, along with seasonal exhibits. In the new layout, the Desert House gathers cacti, succulents and agaves from deserts around the world, with a focus on water conservation and climate change. The Mediterranean House features geraniums, bougainvillea, olive and ficus trees, while the two-storey Tropical Rainforest House holds cacao, coffee, orchids and palms.

The Subtropical House is home to 'Butterflies Bloom', the permanent exhibit that replaces the former seasonal show, with hundreds of free-flying butterflies.

The conservatory is part of the garden's 82 acres in the Lakeside area of Richmond; visitors enter through the atrium, which leads to all four climates. Allow at least an hour for the houses and the butterfly exhibit, now open all year. The visit continues into the new gardens created by the expansion, notably Ann Lee's Meadow, laid out in the shape of a butterfly and planted with more than 70 per cent native species, and along Wick Lake, enlarged to four acres, on the Martha's Way trail.