Though most of Balboa Park’s 1,200 lush acres seem transplanted form Eden, the park’s defined gardens truly qualify as horticultural paradises. When it was built as a garden display for the 1915-16 expos, the Botanical Building was the world’s largest wood-lath structure. It measures 75 feet wide and 250 feet long, and is crowned by an enormous central dome 60 feet high.

Sitting east of the art museum and set back from El Prado pedestrian walkway, the redwood-lathed building admits streaming shafts of sunlight onto more than 2,000 permanent tropical and subtropical plants, as well as a forest of changing seasonal blooms. All plants are carefully labelled; inviting gardeners to leisurely wander in search of ideas for their own homes and nurseries.