These 8 Desert Gardens Feel Like a Small Dose of Summer Year-Round

The first time I walked into the Huntington Desert Garden in California, it hit me like a splash of cold water. Arid land hosts some of Earth’s most vibrant and explosive sculptural flora. These gardens are less desolate landscapes, more botanical fun houses.

I was reminded recently of just how thrilling a carefully curated desert space can be when I entered Jardin Exotique d’Èze (Exotic Garden of Eze) in France, a spectacular collection of xerophytic plants (those that have adapted to survive in dry conditions) built on a medieval fortress perched 1,400 feet above the Mediterranean Sea.

In addition to the unbeatable panorama of the French Riviera—with Nice on one side and Monaco on the other—more than 2,000 species of plants fill the garden, coming into view as I walked along a steep, windy path. These include some of nature’s weirdest masterpieces, growing in spherical and columnar forms covered with spines, spikes, multicolored fruit, and flowers, all labeled with Latin names for their species and genus. Honestly, it was hard to decide what didn’t deserve a photo.

Forget everything you think you know about the desert being a dry, dusty void. Here are eight desert gardens worth traveling around the world for.

Royal Botanic Garden

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The Succulent Garden at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney is one of the most diverse arid-land plant collections in the Southern Hemisphere. Nestled within the historic gardens near the Woolloomooloo Gate, it features a collection of cacti, agaves, aloes, euphorbias, and other succulents arranged into geographical zones to highlight their unique adaptations to harsh, dry environments.

Visitors can admire both the beauty and the resilience of these plants, from dramatic rosettes to vibrant flowering specimens. The stapelia, an oddball favorite, has strange red and yellow flowers that can grow to 16 inches wide, each with a fringe of hair. The Royal Botanic Garden also serves as an educational space, illustrating how succulents conserve water, survive in extreme conditions, and contribute to sustainable landscaping, making this garden a must-visit for exotic-plant owners, arid-land gardeners, and environmentalists.

Desert Botanical Garden

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At the top of many lists of the best drought-tolerant gardens is the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. This 140-acre living museum situated within Papago Park focuses on the research, conservation, and exhibition of more than 50,000 arid plants from deserts worldwide, with a special emphasis on the local Sonoran Desert.

Visitors can explore five thematic trails representing the diversity of desert life, including spectacular collections of agave and cacti, and learn how local Native American communities use these plants. On the Desert View Trail, gigantic organ pipe cacti—some more than 25 feet tall—line the paths, dwarfing passersby. The plant serves multiple functions in the daily life of the O’odham people: The sweet red fruit can be made into preserves, syrup, and a ceremonial wine, the plant’s wood is a key construction material, and the cactus flesh can serve as a compress for aches or snakebites.

Spring is the best time to catch the deep-purple flowers of the Texas mountain laurel, the ruby-red blooms of many cactus species, and the bright-yellow displays of the palo verde tree. Notably, the Desert Botanical Garden is one of only 35 botanical gardens accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The garden is famous for its annual holiday event, Las Noches de Las Luminarias, which spotlights 8,000 hand-lit lanterns.

Exotic Garden of Eze

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Perched dramatically on a cliff overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean Sea, the Exotic Garden of Èze on the French Riviera is a breathtaking blend of history, artistry, and botanical spectacle. This hillside paradise showcases an impressive collection of succulents, cacti, and Mediterranean plants arranged along winding paths and terraces that seem to float above the sea.

Visitors encounter giant agaves, towering cacti, rare euphorbias, and sculptures by artist Jean-Philippe Richard—all set against panoramic vistas of the coastline and a medieval village below. On clear days, you can see the Esterel mountains, the Gulf of St. Tropez, and even the island of Corsica. Carefully designed stone steps, balustrades, and lookout points create nooks for stopping and gawking. At the top of the garden, 1,400 feet above the sea, are the ruins of a 12th-century medieval castle, where you can rest and take in the sheer vertical drama of the terrain.

Jardin Majorelle

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More design-forward than scientific, the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Morocco, is widely regarded as a world-class garden and stunningly artistic botanical oasis in a semi-arid climate. It has an unusual provenance: In 1922, French painter Jacques Majorelle envisioned the nearly 100,000-square-foot area as a sanctuary and a botanical laboratory, so he planted exotic specimens from around the world. He also built outer walls, a labyrinth of crisscrossing alleyways, and a series of colorful buildings that blend both art deco and Moorish influences.

Then, in 1980, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé purchased the garden to save it from destruction at the hands of hotel developers. Today, it is known for its extensive collection of cacti, succulents, palms, and an enchanting North African desert palette, including buildings painted in a cobalt blue that Majorelle patented (known as Majorelle Blue).

The Huntington

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The Huntington’s Desert Garden in San Marino (a city in Los Angeles County) packs one of the finest cultivated collections of desert plants in the world—and this is one of 16 themed gardens at this location. The immersive, 10-acre landscape exhibits more than 2,000 species of cacti, succulents, and arid-zone trees, each labeled with its scientific name and the geographical range where it naturally grows.

Launched in 1907, the garden holds extraordinary botanical treasures: towering Carnegiea (saguaro) grown from seed more than a century ago; sweeping colonies of golden barrel cacti arranged like living sculpture; one of the world’s most significant collections of aloes and agaves; and rare African Euphorbia species, some so old and massive that they resemble small trees.

In winter, the garden’s hillside, planted with South African plants, is particularly striking as it erupts with blooming aloes in red, orange, yellow, and white clusters, while the century-old cactus plantings nearby form a surreal forest of spines and Seussian silhouettes.

Jardin Botanico Culiacán

Mexico has the greatest diversity of cacti, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It also boasts the Jardín Botánico Culiacán in Sinaloa, originally the private collection of Carlos Murillo Depraect (a Mexican engineer, botanist, and passionate landscape advocate) in Sinaloa, Mexico. He began assembling his personal plant collection in 1986, then donated it to create the botanical garden. Now the garden comprises 25 acres dedicated to conservation, scientific investigation, environmental education, and cultural promotion.

The agaves and succulents collection includes more than 100 species, spotlighting plants that store water in their stems, leaves, or roots, which modifies their appearance and increases their chances of survival in arid and rocky environments. Meanwhile, the Sonoran Desert section evokes the rugged deserts of Sonora and Baja—with native cardón, viznagas (golden barrel), and columnar cacti that demonstrate more evolutionary strategies for survival in extreme drought.

The rarest sightings? One-of-a-kind sculptures, paintings, architecture, and video from 38 artists, including Olafur Eliasson, James Turrell, and Gabriel Orozco.

Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden

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South Africa has two desert botanical gardens. Richtersveld Desert Botanical Garden, which opened in the northwest corner, bordering Namibia, in August 2024, is relatively small and aims to create a living bank of plant species facing extinction. Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden, which moved to its current location at the foot of the Hex River Mountains in the Western Cape in 1945, is a sprawling succulent universe with much more to see. Meandering paths lead visitors past towering aloes with coral-red blooms, euphorbias that twist like abstract art, and carpets of flowering mesembs that resemble purple and yellow stones.

The garden’s collection of more than 3,000 succulent species (spread over 380 acres) includes rare treasures like the blue-stemmed Crassula falcata and the towering quiver tree (Aloidendron dichotomum), whose iconic silhouettes evoke the arid landscapes of Namibia. Seasonal displays and meticulously designed rockeries create an immersive experience that is as much about landscape storytelling as it is about plant conservation. Birdsong and the occasional klipspringer (antelope) hopping among boulders remind visitors that this is a living, breathing example of ecosystems surviving against the odds.

Lotusland

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Madame Ganna Walska, a Polish opera singer and socialite, spent four decades transforming her home in Montecito, California, into an otherworldly botanical fantasia known as Lotusland. It is one of the world’s most enchanting and eccentric succulent gardens, a 37-acre estate shaped with theatrical stagings.

The imposing cactus garden, designed with expert botanists, is home to thousands of rare species—including massive golden barrel cacti rescued from a demolished L.A. estate, towering cereus, and unusual African euphorbias—arranged with sculptural precision. The Aloe Garden, Succulent Garden, Cactus and Euphorbia Garden, and Blue Garden combine dramatic masses of succulents in both flowers and foliage: fiery red and orange flower spires of Aloe arborescens, powdery blue-gray rosettes of Agave americana, silvery white rosettes of native Dudleya, and the black-burgundy foliage of Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop.’ Some of these grow to sizes seldom seen in cultivation (the treelike Aloe barberae can reach up to 45 feet tall).

Walska, who married six times and reinvented herself constantly, ultimately poured her entire fortune into the garden; she sold her jewels to fund plant acquisitions and declared the landscape her greatest work of art. Today, Lotusland remains a living expression of her ambition, eccentricity, and devotion to botanical beauty.

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