How long does it take?       9am – 5pm.

How far is it?                         Pasadena and La Canada, near the Rose Bowl

How much $$?                      $6 for lunch.

            As you pass the ticket booth, your eyes will open with amazement when you get a glimpse of 150 acres of sweeping lawns fill with statues, benches and tall trees that hides the beauty of nature waiting for you the explore.  Since 1903 Henry Huntington began to develop botanical gardens and the library’s garden is now home to 15,000 kinds of plants from all over the world that formed several theme gardens. 

            The Japanese Garden lets you find peace as you through a simulate bridge cover with bamboos that will lead you to a beautiful bridge over a pond.  Or perhaps you would like to change the setting and enter the desert garden.  Hundreds of cactuses embellish the garden; many have the most beautiful flowers while others resemble snakes or worms.  Think those are all of your choices? Think again.  Perhaps you would like to visit the rose, camellia, palm, subtropical, jungle, lily ponds, herb, and/or Australian gardens. 

            The cold bitter winter of December does strip all the plants of its beauty.  In fact you can find many flowers blooming at that time like: Aloes, Australian Cassias, Crassulas, Early Magnolias, Floss Silk Trees, Himalayan Cherry, Hollies, Iceland, Poppies.  Although, these does not exclude annual favorites like: Japanese Flowering Apricots, Poinsettias, Roses, and Sasanqua Camellias.

            With so many different plants at the Huntington Library, you wouldn’t be surprise if they also have a vast collection art and historic manuscripts.  Available to the public are early editions of Shakespeare’s works as well as the finest and rare books of Anglo-American civilization.  As you walk through rooms that resembles French and English rooms, outstandingly design and crafted, you will see displays of French and British 18^th and 19^th century art.  With the finest group of full-length British portraits and beautiful furniture, you will have a sense of what it is like to be royal in the 18^th and 19^th century.     

Various displays of artworks are also available to the public for a short period of time.  During the December display, time when we visit the library, you will be expose to “Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.”  An exhibition of different paintings and sculptures by American artists from the 1820s to 1940s, these artworks celebrate America’s landscape and pay tribute to Native Americans.  Another changing attraction is “Eye of the Storm: The Civil War Drawings of Robert Knox Sneden.”  As a mapmaker of the Union Army, Sneden was captured and as able to sketch horrifying images that he saw in prison. 

            Do you still think that there’s nothing interesting in a library?  Come and take part of history as well as nature visit the Huntington Library with GEO.