These seven public gardens highlight Houston’s biodiversity during the city’s most beautiful season.
by Claire Sewell
My grandmother (Nonnie, we called her) loved roses. Growing up, visits to my grandparents’ house in the Park Place neighborhood of Houston meant we’d almost always find her in the backyard garden watering and pruning her rosebushes. What seemed like a tangled mass of thorny branches to my cousins and me was, to Nonnie, an exercise in careful devotion. My mom, unlike my grandmother in almost every way, also loved plants and flowers, especially orchids, which she always kept in a collection in our house. As for me, let’s just say the green-thumb gene seems to have skipped a generation.
Fortunately, for those of us who lack gardening skills, nestled in between Houston’s seemingly endless jumble of roads and freeways are a surprising number of garden spaces bursting with natural life worth exploring. As all Houstonians know, spring is an all-too-brief time in the Bayou City before the boiling temps of the long summer months take over yet again. It’s also the most beautiful time of the year, when our unique ecosystems prove that there’s more to this place than construction and concrete. Here are seven public gardens to get you out and about under the bluest skies of the season.
Betty and Jacob Friedman Holistic Garden
Rice Village
Located on the Rice University campus, the Betty and Jacob Friedman Holistic Garden features fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other plants maintained by volunteers and students from the biosciences department. The space includes a greenhouse and a variety of planter boxes and raised beds, making gardening accessible to people of all abilities. Plant sales are offered twice a year, along with workshops on organic gardening. The garden is open most weekdays and weekends, and visitors are welcome to stop by whenever the gate is open.
Point of interest: The orchard is particularly lovely with pomegranate, persimmon, Ujukitsu sweet lemon, and an assortment of orange trees.
Craft Garden at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
Museum District
This artistically focused garden is planted in four sections (baskets, textiles, dyes, and papers) that engage visitors in the often-overlooked natural aspects of the craft-making process. Here you’ll find surprising materials, such as jute and ramie, that regularly feature in works created in the center’s artist-in-residence program. The garden is always open, and hands-on activities such as nature weavings and cyanotypes are offered every month. Ceramic sculptures intermix with the 70 plant species grown here.
Point of interest: The Rosbarrie Settegast Langdon Fountain is the perfect spot to sit quietly and smell the surrounding flowers.
Genoa Friendship Gardens
Southwest Houston
Just off Beltway 8, the Genoa Friendship Gardens form a vibrant suburban oasis. Owned by Harris County and maintained by members of the Texas Master Gardener program, the space features a rose garden, vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees over two acres. The garden is open year-round on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and Open Garden Days are held every third Monday from March through October, when visitors can meet friendly master gardeners. Plant sales are held in the spring and fall.
Point of interest: A monumental Agave americana (also known as a century plant) is a sight to behold.
Houston Botanic Garden
Southeast Houston
Opened in 2020 on the site of the former Glenbrook Golf Course, the Houston Botanic Garden offers a colossal 132 acres of stunning biodiversity. Block off your calendar, slip into your comfiest shoes, and pack a lunch because you’ll want to take your time traversing every trail. The Global Collection alone will keep you occupied with its tropical, subtropical, and arid zones, but you won’t want to miss the Culinary Garden or the Woodland Glade, either. The Family Discovery Garden also includes fun activities for kids, like the boardwalk maze. Along with its Gardening 101 monthly classes, the Houston Botanic Garden also presents a variety of unique events, including nature sketching workshops, mahjong, and Lego Night.
Point of interest: The Native Texas Foods section acknowledges the ancestral homelands of the Indigenous Atakapa, Akokisa, and Karankawa people, featuring plants such as the bright red chiltepin pepper and the rich purple elderberry.
Japanese Garden
Museum District
Hermann Park’s Japanese Garden is a serene space that transports you away from the city’s hustle and bustle. Opened in 1992, the garden is designed in the daimyo style of fifteenth-century feudal Japan and features a distinctive traditional teahouse structure. Spring is the best time to stop and smell the blossoming cherry trees, purple wisteria, and every shade of azaleas that bring this garden to life. A Yukimi lantern and other stone sculptures will also catch your eye along the kaiyushiki stroll path.
Point of interest: Take in the full view of the garden from the bridge over the large pond as the koi fish swim below.
McGovern Centennial Gardens
Museum District
The towering circular Garden Mount is arguably the showpiece of the McGovern Centennial Gardens, but there’s plenty more to see across its sprawling 15 acres. Mosey down the Pergola Walk, blooming with cornflowers, phlox, and other pollinator plants on your way to the Rose, Arid, and Woodland Garden spaces. You can even take in some history on the Hawkins Sculpture Walk. A formal Celebration Garden and an interactive Family Garden are also part of this magnificent marvel.
Point of interest: Among the loblolly trees of the Tudor Family Pine Hill Walk, you’ll find the gorgeously ornate Friendship Pavilion, a gift to Houston in 1976 from sister city Taipei, Taiwan.
Russ Pitman Park
Bellaire
This woodsy space is a birder’s paradise thanks to its deciduous woodland and prairie wetland habitats. Cooper’s hawks, eastern screech owls, and redheaded woodpeckers can all be seen (and heard) here, along with other rare types like the calliope hummingbird if you’re lucky. The park’s Nature Discovery Center is also home to a menagerie of animals that kids can register to interact with in its weekend Meet the Animals sessions held throughout the year.
Point of interest: The pocket prairie of native wildflowers attracts plenty of showy butterflies.
