Huntsville Botanical Garden

The Huntsville Botanical Garden was established 24 years ago by 14 volunteers who fought both red tape and red clay in a town better known for its race to space. To this day, that volunteer spirit is what enables this beautiful 120 acre garden to run successfully; in fact, to run at all.  With more than 2,300 dedicated volunteers and only around 50 paid employees, Huntsville Botanical Garden is a 99% volunteer-run Garden, as it would be impossible to pay a full staff without losing money due to the tremendous overhead it would take to run a garden of this size with paid employees.  

Our volunteers come to us in many different ways, but one of them is through grief counseling. A Garden can be a beautiful metaphor for the different cycles of life. That's why horticulture therapy is one of the many services that we offer. Our horticulture department works with special needs students from local high schools and we also work with Intergraph Corporation on a special Garden planted just for Cancer Survivors.

Huntsville Botanical Garden has the largest open-aired butterfly house in the nation, home to over 2,000 butterflies from May - September, as well as button quail and dozens of turtles. Our Garden also boasts an outdoor ampthitheatre, a children's garden, beautiful nature trails, an aquatic garden and multiple specialty gardens.

The Garden serves more than 17,000 school children with hands-on education programs each year and welcomes 275,000 visitors from all 50 states and every continent. We also celebrate six seasonal festivals so there is always something new and exciting: Dog Days of Winter (mid January - February), Wild Things and Wild Flowers (March), Spring Festival of Flowers (April), Summer Butterfly House (May - September), Scarecrow Trail (September - October) and the Holiday's Galaxy of Lights (mid-November - December).

We are also the only entity in Alabama that celebrates the environment at Green U: A Festival for the Environment. During this one day festival (this year will be our 4th!), over 70 local businesses, as well as the cities of Huntsville and Madison come together to teach individuals about the things they can do in their life each day to lighten the footprint they leave on Mother Earth. This festival is preceded by the Green U Awards where local individuals and companies are celebrated for their best practices in sustainability.