Cleveland Botanical Garden, located in the University Circle

University Circle

University Circle, is a neighborhood located on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. It is best known for its world-class cultural, educational and medical institutions, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Museum of Art, Lakeview Cemetery, and University...

 neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

, in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, was founded in 1930 as the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland. It was the first such organization in an American city. Originally housed in a converted boathouse

Boathouse

A boathouse is a building especially designed for the storage of boats, normally smaller craft for sports or leisure use. These are typically located on open water, such as on a river. Often the boats stored are rowing boats...

 on Wade Park Lagoon, the center served as a horticultural

Horticulture

Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

 library, offering classes and workshops for gardeners and spearheading beautification

Beautification

Beautification is the process of making visual improvements to a person, place or thing. With regard to a town, city or to an urban area, this most often involves planting trees, shrubbery, and other greenery, but frequently also includes adding decorative or historic-style street lights and other...

 projects in the community. In 1966, having outgrown its original home, the Garden Center moved to its present location in University Circle, the site of the old Cleveland Zoo. Remnants of the old bear pit

Bear pit

A bear pit was historically used to display bears, typically for entertainment and especially bear-baiting. The pit area was normally surrounded by a high fence, above which the spectators would look down on the bears....

 still remain in the Ohio Woodland Garden. In 1994, the organization's Board of Trustees changed the name to Cleveland Botanical Garden to reflect a dramatically expanded mission and launched an ambitious capital campaign to develop a facility that would support the enhanced program agenda. The expanded and renovated building, designed by Graham Gund

Graham Gund

Graham de Conde Gund is an American architect and the president of the Gund Partnership, an American architecture firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and founded by Gund in 1971...

 Architects of Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, opened to the public in July 2003.

The centerpiece of the $50 million 2003 expansion is The Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glasshouse, an 18,000 square foot (1,700 m²) conservatory

Conservatory (greenhouse)

A conservatory is a room having glass roof and walls, typically attached to a house on only one side, used as a greenhouse or a sunroom...

 home to plant and animal life from two separate biome

Biome

Biomes are climatically and geographically defined as similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, and are often referred to as ecosystems. Some parts of the earth have more or less the same kind of abiotic and biotic factors spread over a...

s, the spiny desert of Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

 and the cloud forest

Cloud forest

A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and...

 of Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. They feature over 350 species of plants and 50 species of animals, including hundreds of butterflies.

There are also 10 acres (40,468.6 m²) of gardens, including the award-winning Hershey Children's Garden (the first children's garden in Ohio), the Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden, the David and Paula Swetland Topiary Garden, the Western Reserve Herb Society Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Sears-Swetland Rose Garden, the Ohio Woodland, the C.K. "Pat" Patrick Perennial Border, and the public Campsey-Stauffer Gateway Garden.

Recently, they were featured in an episode of Supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

, call "Dark Side of the Moon".

Gallery

Music Themed Garden

Hershey Children's Garden