Plants of the Bible Conservatory (Creation Museum)

The Creation Museum opened on 28 May 2007 in Petersburg, in Boone County, northern Kentucky. It is run by Answers in Genesis, a creationist organisation; this entry does not take up its views or its message and sticks to the building and its plants.

According to Wikipedia, the museum announced in October 2021 a project called the Eden Teaching Center, which included a conservatory and greenhouses, a classroom and an interactive dig site. In March 2023 the trade magazine Greenhouse Management quoted Answers in Genesis's director of horticulture: ground had just been broken for a conservatory and butterfly house, with three growing facilities to supply them and no opening date yet. In August 2023 a post by the museum's founder mentioned work slowed by supply problems and said the conservatory and its supporting greenhouses were all glass. By February 2024 the boiler room, described as an integral part of the conservatory, was almost finished and the neighbouring classroom nearly complete.

The first plants arrived in June 2024: an Australian bottle tree, given to the horticulture department in 2016, was planted at a ceremony, and the rest of the shipment followed a few days later. The museum was then aiming for the start of ChristmasTown on 29 November 2024. Its blog says the conservatory opened on "Friday", with the ribbon-cutting on the following Monday, while an Answers in Genesis post dated 30 November says it opens "today": the sources do not agree on the exact day. The museum calls it the largest conservatory in Kentucky.

The complex consists of four glasshouses, called "separate" by the museum. They are staggered, which leaves a central open-air courtyard where raised beds and containers hold edible plants in summer. The route passes from one house to the next, and the exit leads visitors back towards the first. On OpenStreetMap the building is drawn as a single polygon pierced by the courtyard, with gabled roofs, inside a rectangle of about 56 m by 35 m: this crowd-sourced outline gives a footprint, not a growing area.

Each house has its own climate, controlled separately. The museum's website lists, after the large entrance house, subtropical, Mediterranean and then arid settings; Answers in Genesis posts speak, depending on the date, of tropical, Mediterranean, temperate and arid climates, and a garden blog describes the first house differently again. The names therefore vary from source to source. The site lies in USDA hardiness zone 6 according to that blog, which means the plants need protection from winter cold; a boiler room is an integral part of the complex.

A garden blog published in July 2025 describes the four houses. The first is planted with three date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), edged with seasonal annuals. The second, subtropical, holds young carob, etrog (citron), fig, pistachio and cinnamon trees, along with a sycomore fig (Ficus sycomorus), of which the author knows only one other example in the United States, at the Los Angeles arboretum. The third, Mediterranean, shelters olive, bay laurel, myrtle and pomegranate trees, perennial herbs such as mint, wormwood and hyssop, and a watercourse lined with papyrus; Cretan rockrose (Cistus creticus) also grows there. The fourth, arid, gathers thorny plants: an acacia (Acacia farnesiana) fills a central planter, ringed by a hedge of Euphorbia milii, which the blog notes is not native to Israel. The museum says a plant seen near the end of the tour may have been used for the crown of thorns.

The courtyard holds grapevines, melons and cucumbers in summer. Answers in Genesis also mentions a section of Australian plants, including a bottle tree and a plumeria (frangipani), and palms in the large tropical house.

The conservatory stands near the Creation Zoo, within the grounds of the Creation Museum in Petersburg. The visit is self-guided and follows the four houses in order, then the courtyard; the museum states that the route comes with religious messaging. A garden blog says museum, gardens and conservatory are covered by a single ticket. The museum's hours page covers the museum, the botanical gardens, the zoo and the zip lines; the museum is closed on Sundays.

The museum's botanical gardens, laid out around a lake and its bridges, are walked on paved paths. At the end of the year the ChristmasTown programme lights up the gardens and decorates the conservatory with lights.