Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science (The Huntington)

The conservatory belongs to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, the institution Henry Huntington created on his San Marino estate in 1919. It was conceived as the centrepiece of a wider effort to help visitors learn about botany in the garden: a building devoted not only to displaying plants but to teaching plant science.

The project was supported by a $6 million grant from the Rose Hills Foundation, whose name it bears, while the National Science Foundation funded the educational exhibits with $1.75 million. In 2005, as construction neared completion, the Huntington's botanical and education staff planned and designed the hands-on exhibitions that would occupy it; the institution's annual report records the conservatory's opening in October 2005. Its arrival prompted several gifts for landscaping around the building, including a collection of cycads donated by Harold Lachs.

The building forms part of the Brody Botanical Center, named after Frances Lasker Brody, a major benefactor of the gardens. Its design looks back deliberately: it takes its inspiration from the lath house built on the estate in the early twentieth century, creating a visual link between the new facility and the property's horticultural past. James Folsom, now emeritus director of the Botanical Gardens, described it as an innovative model for science education in botanical gardens, adding that no other public garden in the world had this kind of facility.

Designed by Offenhauser Associates, the conservatory is a steel-and-glass building made up of a large central rotunda flanked by two symmetrical wings. The rotunda measures 96 feet (about 29 m) across and reaches a maximum interior height of 43 feet (about 13 m); the wings rise to 26 feet (about 8 m) inside. The silhouette echoes the estate's early lath house, translated into a fully glazed structure.

Its 16,000 square feet (about 1,490 m²) are divided into four distinct environments: a tropical lowland rain forest, a tropical cloud forest, a temperate carnivorous plant bog and a field laboratory, the plant lab, fitted with experiment stations devoted to the parts of plants. The layout follows from the building's teaching role: the interactive exhibits, which use living plants, were designed as tools for teaching botanical science to middle-school students. The conservatory also serves as the front door of the Brody Botanical Center.

More than 700 different plants grow in the conservatory, which represents an important part of the Huntington's tropical collections. Each specimen was chosen for a reason: to show the diversity of plant life forms, from trees and vines to herbs, lianas and epiphytes; to represent the tropics of many different countries; and to create a naturalistic setting for the exhibits. Some of the plants have value for conservation and scientific study, and a few have even supplied material for the publication of new species. The display changes from time to time to give visitors a fresh look at the tropical collections.

The carnivorous plant wing complements the rain forest and cloud forest, while the plant lab encourages visitors to look at everyday plants in new ways. The Huntington is also known for its corpse flowers, Amorphophallus titanum, whose blooms it has recorded repeatedly since 1999, including four in 2018 and three each in 2021 and 2023.

The conservatory is included in a visit to The Huntington, at 1151 Oxford Road in San Marino, whose gardens, library and art collections can easily fill a day. An hour allows time for the four environments and the plant lab, whose interactive stations were designed above all with middle-school students in mind.

Nearby, the Desert Garden, with more than 5,000 species of xerophytes, has its own conservation greenhouse, and the Chinese Garden, whose lake was excavated from 2005, extends the walk. In the art galleries, the portraits The Blue Boy and Pinkie are among the best-known works in the collection.