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Around the World in 55 Acres — Without Leaving San Francisco

Members of the Bay Area Travel Writers beneath the towering Monterrey Pine at the entrance to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens.
Members of the Bay Area Travel Writers toured the San Francisco Botanical Gardens.

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Peruvian Lilies at San Francisco Botanical Garden.

My article for Bay Area Travel Writers is now live: “Around the World in 55 Acres: SF Botanical Garden Recap.”

The piece grew out of a foggy May morning in Golden Gate Park, when members of Bay Area Travel Writers and their plus-ones gathered at the San Francisco Botanical Garden for a guided walk led by BATW member Susan Alcorn.

What followed was less a simple garden stroll than a botanical trip around the world — through Mediterranean blooms, cloud forests, redwoods, succulents, California natives, and one unforgettable “Dinosaur Garden” moment beneath enormous gunnera leaves.

The visit was also a reminder of something I love about travel writing: you don’t always need a boarding pass to encounter a place with layers of history, culture, ecology, and surprise. Sometimes the wider world is waiting in a city park you thought you already knew.

Read the full recap on the Bay Area Travel Writers website.

The King Protea is made up of many tiny individual flowers. This one is unopened.
The pond at the Moon Viewing Garden at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens is covered in duckweed.
The huge prickly gunner in the Ancient Plant Garden at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

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Julia@travelthefourcorners

Julia@travelthefourcorners

I must have caught the travel bug at five months old when we moved from the US to Arabia. I've been vaccinated for every bug but that one. Some say it is the most incurable of all, but I'm okay with that.

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