By Yankee Magazine
May 03 2021
Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts
Photo Credit : Tower Hill Botanic Garden/Mala Lam PhotosA dose of summer can be had every weekday at this handicapped-accessible teaching facility filled with 1,000 different orchids and 600 or so tropical, subtropical, and succulent plants. Every half dozen years or so, the greenhouse’s most famous inhabitant—a gargantuan corpse flower nicknamed “Morphy”—comes into bloom, and thousands turn up to experience its notorious stench. And if you like to linger, you can “picnic” in the foliage-filled multipurpose room.
The urge to shed layers will hit you almost as quickly as the perfume of jasmine, bougainvillea, and citrus as you close the door of one of America’s oldest greenhouse complexes behind you. Newly renovated for better accessibility, the four brick-and-glass structures burst with a variety of living oddities and heirlooms. Visit in March to see the 1820 Camellia House’s century-old specimens in radiant bloom.
New England’s largest indoor garden is a 23,000-square-foot terrarium that shows off plant life in its myriad forms, from delicate flowers to spiky cacti to pest-eating carnivorous species. Frequent public events include talks on gardening topics and opportunities to create in this inspiring space.