By Shannon Dortch

Welcome to our new virtual front door! Cornell Botanic Gardens’ updated website is designed to help you explore all that we offer—from beautiful gardens and natural areas, to guided tours and classes, to the personal restoration that only the natural world provides.

Enhancements make it easier to plan a visit, enjoy the best of each season, and access our vast plant collections. Here are some of the highlights:

Interactive map

Between our specialty gardens around the Nevin Welcome Center, tree collections and gardens in the Newman Arboretum, and more than 3,000 acres of natural areas both on Cornell’s campus and throughout the county, we offer a lot to explore. Our interactive map is an easy way to get the “lay of the land” to help you plan your next adventure at Cornell Botanic Gardens. The interactive map allows you to understand areas based on your interest, intelligently leading you on explorations of gardens, natural areas, scenic overlooks, waterfalls, and outdoor sculpture, as well as practical amenities like restrooms and parking areas. For each point of interest on the map, a window pops up with a link to more information or directions.

Don’t miss it—the best of what’s blooming, growing, and flowing

This new, frequently updated section introduces you to “not to be missed” gardens, natural areas, and plant collections, based on season, bloom, and more. With so much to see at Cornell Botanic Gardens, this guide helps you plan an extended visit or a quick pop-in, to experience the best of every season.

Experiences

Pick your adventure! This section guides you to the Cornell Botanic Gardens’ experience that best fits you, based on your interests, your visiting companions, and the time you have for rambling. Avid bird watcher? Find out where you are most likely to spy birds among the more than 100 species found at Cornell Botanic Gardens. Visiting with children? We guide you to the prime spots for turtle watching, boulder scrambling, and more.

Plant Database

Cornell Botanic Gardens is a living museum, and like other museums, we have collections, all cataloged or “accessioned.” Our new website makes our collections—both in cultivated gardens and wild plants in natural areas—readily accessible. Type in a plant by common name, scientific name, family, or key word, then scan through a list of results to select the plant or plants about which you want to learn more. Each plant has a dedicated page with images and information imported from our plant records database along, with the gardens or areas where you can find the plant growing.

Cornell faculty and student opportunities

See how Cornell’s living museum enhances the research, teaching, and wellbeing of the Cornell community. The 3,600 acres we manage serve as the outdoor classroom and laboratory of the university. We provide educational and research opportunities to the Cornell academic community by hosting research in our areas, offering, with CALS, a master’s degree in Public Garden Leadership, and hosting class site visits for courses from all the university’s schools and colleges.
This web feature provides information on using the botanic gardens for class instruction, research, and independent study, including a database of current and past research uses, and links to required forms.

Connecting you to plants and nature

Take a few minutes to click around our new website. Gorgeous images of the gardens, arboretum, and natural areas transport you to Cornell Botanic Gardens from anywhere, inspiring you deepen your vital connection with plants and the natural world, and—we hope—to visit!