New Orleans has no shortage of oak canopy, and most garden writing here stops at the moss. These four are designed horticultural spaces with collections, programming, and people maintaining them.
1. New Orleans Botanical Garden — City Park
Ten acres hold more than 2,000 plant varieties inside one of the few surviving WPA-era public gardens in the American South. It started as a City Park Rose Garden in 1936 and took its current shape in the 1980s, with Art Deco detailing and architecture throughout.
The Conservatory of the Two Sisters holds a collection of ancient plants including cycads, plus a tropical rainforest room with orchids, ferns, bromeliads, a waterfall, and a rock cave. The Pavilion of the Two Sisters was modeled on a French orangery. The Helis Foundation Enrique Alférez Sculpture Garden and the Yakumo Nihon Teien Japanese Garden are both included with admission, though the Japanese Garden has been reported closed for renovation. Entry is at the Oscar J. Tolmas Visitor Center on Victory Avenue, Tuesday through Sunday from 10 to 4:30 with last entry at 4. Louisiana residents get in free every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation. Tuesdays at Twilight brings indoor concerts from 6 to 8 at $15.
2. Longue Vue House and Gardens — Near Lakeview
Eight acres of designed gardens came from Ellen Biddle Shipman, one of the most significant American landscape architects of her era, built between 1939 and 1942 alongside the house. Sections draw on the Generalife, the sultans’ summer palace in Granada, with fountains, formal terraces, and a colonnaded loggia.
The gardens are open for self-guided walking, which separates them from the house itself, accessible only by guided tour. Garden admission runs $10 for adults and $5 for children, with guided house and garden combination tours at $30 and $25. A Discovery Garden gives children something to do rather than just look at. A gardener leads plant collection walks focused on native species. Thursday Garden Volunteers meet weekly to work alongside staff, and the first Sunday of each month brings free garden admission for Louisiana residents. The address is 7 Bamboo Road, about 20 minutes from downtown.
3. Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden — City Park
Eleven acres sit adjacent to NOMA holding 100 sculptures, but the landscape came first. The garden was built into an existing mature stand of pines, magnolias, and live oaks wrapped around two lagoons, and the design carved viewing rooms out of that rather than clearing it.
Admission is free, seven days a week, with summer hours of 10 to 6 from April through September and winter hours of 10 to 5 from October through March. The property is barrier-free with wheelchairs available on request. Elyn Zimmerman’s Mississippi Meanders bridge crosses the water and lights up at dusk. Arman’s twenty-foot obelisk of welded bronze cellos rises out of a lagoon. A downloadable map identifies every work, and a Google Arts & Culture virtual tour covers the highlights for anyone planning ahead.
4. Clouet Gardens — Bywater
This one is a neighborhood project rather than an institution, which is exactly why it belongs here. The lot on Clouet Street holds a maintained lawn, planters, and roses, with seating scattered through it and local art installations throughout.
Programming runs the way a community garden’s does: concerts, markets, yoga sessions, and tree planting ceremonies. A public piano painted by artist Adam Lozoya sits on the grounds, along with a Little Free Library. Admission is free and the space stays open to anyone walking past. Dogs are welcome on the grass. It reads as the opposite of the Botanical Garden in every way that matters, which makes it worth seeing in the same week.
