Tucson Botanical Gardens

Great way to spend the afternoon in this beautiful Arizona weather. Beautiful plants and greenery.

Annual lighting show with friends. A stroll among many many special light demonstrations individual to the plant. Maybe a few hundred will come. This is a pay event. No live music.

A smaller, serene botanical garden in Tucson. They highlight flowering shrubs, flowers and cacti from the Southwest and around the world.Highly recommended.Family-friendly with great walking paths. I could have spent hours just breezing around.

The Tucson Botanical Gardens are a beautiful place to visit any time of year, but they are especially magical during the holiday season. The gardens are decorated with thousands of twinkling lights and luminarias, and there are also special exhibits and events, such as the annual Festival of Lights. Unfortunately, we didn't see the lights on as we visited during the day! But I'd love to come back and see the gardens at night with the lights on. Features: * The gardens are home to over 1,500 different species of cacti and succulents. * The butterfly habitat is a large, enclosed space filled with hundreds of colorful butterflies. We were told there were about 300 there when we went today. * The Great Garden Express model trains. Don't miss these!I would highly recommend the Tucson Botanical Gardens to anyone looking for a fun and festive holiday experience.

The Botanical Gardens are a lovely place to enjoy throughout the year. This review is for their "Lights Up" holiday lights event. Thousands of LED lights illuminate the trees, there are gorgeous installations throughout the gardens. The light tunnel, dancing cypress trees, and crescent moon were among our favorites. The giant Christmas tree at the entrance decorated in bird houses was beautiful too. This was our favorite light show of the season.

What a gorgeous display of Christmas lights at Tucson's Botanical Gardens. It is open from November 29th to January 12th, 2025. Being from out of town, I was so happy that I was able to share this moment with my son who is currently living in Tucson. It's a small botanical garden so take your time to soak in the wonder of all these twinkling lights. I was in awe at how high some of the lights were. As you walk into each area, Christmas songs are played. You can't help but sing along. We got some hot cocoa with marshmallows and whipped cream and a hot dog. Both were delicious. You can get these at the cafe or cart.Best to purchase your tickets online to guarantee entry the day of. Parking is limited, first come first serve. Gift shop is near the exit.

This place is lovely. We went last night for the Lights Up event and it was beautiful. We walked around for over an hour enjoying all the lights, luminaries, and desert botanicals. I'm excited to go back during the daytime to see all the vegetation in daylight. We loved the train display! So cute :) I will be back next year for Lights Up!

This venue is apparently in a major state of flux, having, according to the docent vending information, bought up some adjacent properties and received a commitment from a large donor, thereby facilitating significant expansion. If you're into model trains, a chunk of the garden has been turned into a big choo choo track. And there's a zen garden. But the mission seems to have veered away from cactus, succulents and native xeriscape. There is at the moment, so much less to see than when we were last here. I imagine that will change over time, but I doubt I'll be back. It would have been helpful to be advised the gardens were undergoing whatever this is.

Looking for a casual walk through gorgeous Christmas lights mixed in with luminaries and a special bonus of model trains with southwest buildings? Tucson Botanical Gardens is hosting their seasonal event, Lightsup, a festival of illumination! We purchased our tickets on their website. We arrived at our designated time, checked in and walked through the event at our leisure. The first thing you will see is a beautiful Christmas tree adorned with bird houses! It is so neat and so unique. The lights inside the gardens have different sections for different displays and the trees are saturated with lights. It is spectacular! Our favorite this year was the model train display. Sonoran desert model builders created beautiful buildings with miniature wreaths, trees, ristas, luminaries, and poinsettias. It truly is a must see. You will also have a chance to have your photo taken by a TBG volunteer at a beautiful light display, that was a special touch too!This event has become our family favorite!

Our pups usually go out with us at least a couple times a month but this summer, finding enough shade for them has been a challenge so they've been stuck at home. In comes Tucson Botanical Gardens and its awesome Dog Days of Summer event! June 1-Sept 30 your pup and you can visit the gardens! Dog tickets are 5$ or 20$ for their own membership and unlimited visits! TBG opens up bright and early at 7:30 and we visited pretty much everything at a really slow pace with plenty of breaks by 11:30. Rather than talk about all the cool plants you'll see, I wanted to take a moment and appreciate all the art we saw! There were beautiful tile mosaic benches and murals all over, bee nesting boxes that doubled as sculptures and giant sculptures of sea creatures made from plastic trash! Their trains are so much fun and we loved the miniature landmarks and historic sites and representations of National Parks. The waterfall was also incredible and the amazing volunteers on site not only kept the trains running, they were also happy to talk to folks about the exhibit. We stopped at Edna's Eatery and although all our drinks were delicious, the monkey bread we got tasted really old and the cream cheese frosting wasn't good and the pumpkin scone someone else got in our group was nothing special but at least it tasted fresh! We were starving so we ate them but I don't think we'd eat there again. We'd just stick to drinks.On a final note, 2 folks in our group have mobility issues and need frequent breaks so all the seating scattered throughout the gardens was perfect. You really didn't have to travel much at all before finding the next seating area. It was perfect for us.Don't wait to have out of town visitors to visit Tucson Botanical Gardens. Support this wonderful place year-round!