The Botanic Garden at 100: What's New Up Mission Canyon This October

"The idea is that the Botanic Garden isn't just a pretty place to walk in Mission Canyon," executive director Steve Windhager told Noozhawk this summer. In his words, it "provides science support throughout the state and is an increasingly visible force in promoting the value and power of native plants."

The Garden marks its hundredth year this month. Its first free Sunday is today, October 4. For anyone on the Riviera, the Garden is a short drive up Mission Canyon Road, and this month's calendar makes the visit easy. The more lasting news came on October 1, in a press release that puts Windhager's idea into numbers. Most of what the Garden plans for its next century happens beyond its gate. The parts that would change your own visit are a remodeled shop, better paths and a food window, and for now all three are plans.

Four Free Sundays, Each Opening a Themed Week

The Garden was founded on March 16, 1926, beside a creek in Mission Canyon where California laurel still grows naturally. To mark the centennial, admission is free every Sunday in October. Each Sunday opens a week built around one theme.

"Free" has a condition. The Garden requires advance reservations for every Community Day "due to parking and capacity limits." That same parking limit runs all year. A regular reservation includes parking for one standard vehicle, vehicles longer than 31 feet are not allowed, and the Garden describes its lot as limited. On a free Sunday, the number of parking spaces is what caps attendance.

There are two smaller things to know. The All Hallows Evening on October 23 is listed as sold out, and only service animals are allowed at that event, which breaks from the Garden's usual dog-friendly rules. The October 6 sound bath with PALMA Colectiva and both Health & Wellness classes need separate registration.

What Is Actually New on the Grounds

If you last walked the Garden a year or more ago, the newest additions are easy to miss because most of them are small.

The Torrey Pine Conservation Grove. The grove opened in March, just down a small hill from the Pritzlaff Conservation Center. It holds 45 Torrey pines grown from pine nuts that staff collected on Santa Rosa Island under a grant from the U.S. Forest Service and the American Public Gardens Association. The Garden says the trees represent separate maternal lines. When the grove opened, the trees were about a foot tall. In the right conditions they can grow past 100 feet. Torrey pines grow wild in only two places: Santa Rosa Island and Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in San Diego County.

"Still Growing: 100 Years of California's Native Plants." This exhibit fills the Pritzlaff Conservation Center Gallery with more than 200 archive photos and adds a digital companion through QR codes. It is included with admission and runs through March 21, 2027.

The Centennial Route. The Garden's 2026 route map turns features you may already know, including Mission Dam, Blaksley Boulder at the Meadow and the Redwood Section, into marked stops with interpretation. It adds stories to the existing paths. It does not mark any rebuilt trail. A large "100" sculpture with a floral backdrop stands in the Meadow.

The Backcountry casitas. The three play installations chosen in September 2025 still stand in the 4.5-acre children's Backcountry: Gnome Home, Live Oak Loop and Tres Osos Negros. Casitas can stay for up to two years. The October 23 event promises a preview of a new playhouse before it officially opens, though the listing gives neither a designer nor an opening date.

Each addition starts small or points somewhere else. The pines need decades to grow. The exhibit looks back over the past century. The route map draws on history that was already on the grounds. The October 1 announcement puts a price on that long horizon.

The October 1 Announcement

On October 1, the Garden launched a $30 million Centennial Campaign. The goal is split evenly three ways:

• Connected Communities, $10 million for programs: demonstration gardens across Santa Barbara County, expanded youth programs, professional training and wider sharing of research.
• Rooted in Place, $10 million for capital improvements: better ADA access across the Garden, path improvements, an interior remodel of the existing Garden Shop building into a visitor center that keeps the building's exterior, and a food-service window selling beverages, sandwiches, salads and snacks.
• A Legacy for the Future, $10 million for endowment: long-term funding for research, education, advocacy and conservation.

Mark Funk and Nancy Weiss co-chair the campaign's Steering Committee.

For a regular visitor, the second item is the one you will eventually notice. The Garden Shop would become a visitor center, the paths would be easier to walk, and food would be sold on site. The release gives no timeline for any of it. Until construction is announced, treat these as plans. For now, the shop and nursery are open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and you can shop the nursery without paying admission.

The release explains why only a third of the money goes to the grounds themselves. In 2010, the Garden ran two offsite projects. Today it runs more than 50 active conservation projects, reaching from Mendocino County to Baja California and east to the Sierra Nevada. Its Herbarium and Lichenarium hold more than 220,000 specimens, and its Seed Bank stores nearly 5 million seeds covering more than 400 at-risk species. The Garden's main work no longer happens only in Mission Canyon.

Where the Garden Is Planting Instead

That outside work already reaches places Riviera residents pass every week. The Garden lists native plantings on State Street and at Elings Park, Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens and Hammond's Meadow County Open Space, known as Shalawa. At Elings Park, a one-acre native test plot planted in 2023 now draws native insects, birds and other wildlife, according to Noozhawk.

The Garden's goal goes past public sites. It wants native plants to cover 30% of home gardens and of the region as a whole. Windhager put it this way:

"Native plants should become a default, and every garden should have some natives in it."

To make that practical, the Garden has added more beginner and advanced native gardening classes. It launched a Native Plant Pledge in April. Its landscaper certification program has trained about 200 native-plant professionals in two years, including two cohorts taught in Spanish. The Garden and Channel Islands Restoration are also opening a wholesale native plant nursery on More Ranch Road. It will supply the Garden's own nursery, regional restoration projects and local retail nurseries. No opening date has been published.

This month the outreach even shows up on drink menus. Through October 31, "Garden to Glass" puts cocktails made with native plants from the Garden on menus around town, and $1 from each one goes to the Garden. The Garden's list names Barbareño, Bistro Amasa, Convivo, Finch & Fork, La Paloma, Little Dom's, Monte's, The Good Lion, The Lark and Third Window Brewing. The Santa Barbara Independent counts 11 participants, adding El Encanto, and separately describes a Redwood Tip Old Fashioned at Loquita. Ask your server before you order.

Several of the drinks use plants from the Garden by name:

1. Little Dom's Laurino Old Fashioned, with California Bay Laurel from the Garden and Redwood Empire whiskey.
2. The Good Lion's Golden Hour, a sour made with Desert Lavender, peach, honey and lemon.
3. Barbareño's Sunlit Hummingbird, with purple sage, guava, blood orange and passion fruit.
4. Third Window Brewing's Saison Automne 2026, brewed with a tea of white and black sage.
5. Monte's Hazy Daze, a gin sour with lavender sourced from the Garden.

The bay laurel in the first drink grows naturally along the same Mission Canyon creek where the Garden started in 1926.

Before You Drive Up

• Hours: daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the last reservation at 4 p.m. Members get a 9 to 10 a.m. hour and can walk in, though the Garden recommends booking ahead.
• Dogs: leashed dogs are welcome all year at no charge, as long as they stay on paths and owners pick up after them.
• Membership: new members who join in October get $10 off.
• Later centennial events: the Garden has previewed a large community celebration for fall 2026 but has not set a date.

The Garden's push for native plants in home gardens matters when you prepare a hillside property for sale or plan a garden around a new purchase. If you are thinking through either, Maureen McDermut and our trusted landscape and design partners can walk the property with you. Schedule a private consultation.