Red Butte Garden is a Botanical Garden and Arboretum in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Garden offers walking paths through 11 themed gardens and nearly four miles of hiking trails. In addition to the botanical garden and arboretum, please check the calendar for educational and entertaining events such as garden-related workshops and Garden tours, children's Garden Adventures, seasonal family events, summer camps, summer stage performances, bonsai and orchid shows, and art exhibits.
You will find something for everyone at Red Butte Garden. A quiet walk may suit your mood. You might want to see which plants could work for your landscape, noting interpretive markers on many plants. Red Butte Garden is a place for children to experience the natural world and a place for a date or family outing with hiking trails and picnic spots. The trails provide expansive views across the Salt Lake Valley.
Red Butte Garden is open year-round with seasonal natural beauty and family-friendly events. In the spring, be sure to see the Garden's nearly 300,000 spring bulbs covering the landscape in bright color.
The themed gardens include the Children's Garden with three oversized sculptural lizards suitable for sitting and photo opportunities of your little ones. There is also a maze covered in vines perfect for those under our-feet-tall to explore. Other garden themes are the three Terrace Gardens: an Herb Garden, a Medicinal Garden and Fragrance Garden. The "doorways" to these gardens feature wisteria arbors with purple blooms in early June. There is also a Floral Walk featuring pear trees grown on an arbor trellis that arcs overhead. As you enter the lower gardens from the Floral Walk you'll find the Rose Garden and Water Pavillion with nearby waterfalls as well as the Amphitheatre that seats up to 3,000 guests for summer concerts, Monday Family Nights, Greek Theatre and Sundance Institute films. As you round the loop of the lower garden to return to the Visitor's Center, you'll pass by the wildflower meadow and another access point to the Natural Area - this pathway goes through the Oak Tunnel. The Oak Tunnel is landmark of the Garden presenting one more opportunity for personal photographs. The paved path from here ascends along the Great Wall where there are three "waysides" that offer a place to sit in the shade. Two of the waysides are decks that could be described as "bird's nests" up in the trees. At the top of the Great Wall you will see the Terrace Gardens on the right and on the left is an area planned for a future conservation garden stretching up the hillside.
Throughout the Garden there are plant collections with seasonal interest such as miniature spring bulbs and narcissus, crab apple trees, penstemon, conifers, service berry, and ornamental grasses.
A brisk walk through the Garden could take as little as 30 minutes or you may want to linger longer and spend half a day. The Garden is open Monday through Sunday and hours follow daylight with shorter hours in winter and longer hours in summer. The Visitor's Center can provide you a map of the Gardens and of the trails in the Natural Area.
