Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is defined by its focus on California native plants, which are arranged in ecological communities—such as desert, meadow, and redwood forest—rather than as isolated specimens. Spanning seventy-eight acres in Mission Canyon, the garden was founded in nineteen twenty-six by philanthropist Anna Dorinda Blaksley Bliss to honor her father. It began as a thirteen-acre memorial site called the Blaksley Botanic Garden before incorporating as an independent institution in nineteen thirty-nine.