The Botanic Garden of Smith College is free and open to the public year round. We want everyone to be able to visit, spend time connecting to the plant world, learning from our collections, and being part of our community e explore our 127-acre arboretum, the 6 acres of managed outdoor gardens, and our 12,000 square foot conservatory.
Lyman Plant House & ConservatoryDaily from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Closed on 11/28 and 11/29 for the Thanksgiving holiday, and during the Smith College winter break. Please note, hours change during our annual flower shows.
Our two seasonal shows have been a treasured Smith tradition for over 100 years. The Spring Bulb Show and Fall Chrysanthemum Show began in the early 1900s as showcases of student learning. Today, the shows draw visitors from near and far to take in the display of horticultural skill.
We are unable to accommodate guided tours during the Spring Bulb Show, Fall Chrysanthemum Show or Reunion weekend. If you do plan to visit as a group of 10 or more during one of our annual flower shows, we ask that you let us know through our online scheduler.
There are two accessible entrances, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, and a lift in the front of the building that goes between the lower-level Church Gallery and the reception area. Maps of accessible routes through Lyman Conservatory are available at the front desk.
With 127 acres of arboretum, 6-acres of outdoor managed gardens and a 12,000 square foot conservatory, we invite you to explore the natural world through our extensive plant collections. Plant collections are central to what botanic gardens do and for many reasons. At the Botanic Garden of Smith College, more than 7,000 documented, labeled and mapped plants represent a broad selection of native and non-native species, ranging from cultivars of landscape plants to wild collected species with provenance that underpins our conservation efforts.
Lyman Plant House is one of the few remaining plant conservatories in the United States that was built in the 19th century. With its tropical greenhouses dating to 1895, Lyman holds more than 2,200 plant species selected from a wide variety of families and habitats. It comprises one of the most diverse collections of tropical, subtropical and desert plants in the country. Explore Lyman Plant House.
Our landscape contains numerous named gardens, each built to provide both a sense of place as well as tools and inspiration for learning. These spaces integrate our history with our vision for the future as a leader in conservation and education. Our gardens and the elements within them allow visitors to explore the beauty and diversity of the botanical world as well as their relationships to each other, to humanity, and to the complex living environments that they naturally occur in today. Learn more.
The Botanic Garden of Smith College is located on the campus of Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It consists of a fine selection of woody trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and an excellent collection of tropical and subtropical plants in The Lyman Conservatory (greenhouses in the Lyman Plant House). All are open to the public.
Smith''s Botanic Garden collection includes 1200 types of woody trees and shrubs, 2200 types of hardy herbaceous plants, 3200 types of tender herbaceous and woody plants in greenhouses, and 6600 different kinds of plants, giving a total of approximately 10,000 types of plants on campus.
The Lyman Conservatory''s greenhouses with 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) date from 1895, and house over 2500 species of plants for the instruction of Smith students in the plant sciences. These plants are selected from a wide variety of families and habitats; they comprise one of the best collections of tropical, subtropical, and desert plants in the country.
Associate Professor of Anthropology Colin Hoag and his students have been exploring that question in a research project that combines insights from anthropology, biological sciences, literature and women''s history.
Their findings are on display in an exhibit created in collaboration with the Botanic Garden of Smith College that opens September 15 in Lyman Plant House and Conservatory. The Bell Jars: Lyman Conservatory and Sylvia Plath''s Botanical Imagination uses archival materials and Plath''s writing to offer new views of her life and literary inspiration.
Visitors to the exhibit will see bell jars being used to help grow plants at Lyman. A listening station will feature recordings of Plath reading her poetry, and another display will include essays by students in Hoag''s anthropology seminar focusing on botanical themes in the famous alum''s writing.
The inspiration for Hoag''s project was personal. His grandmother, Barbara Brewster Hoag ''43, spoke often about her love for Smith. Professor Hoag''s own curiosity about college history led him to special collections at Neilson Library. At the same time, he began reading The Bell Jar, Plath''s 1963 novel about an artistic undergraduate struggling with societal constraints on women''s lives.
"I read her lab books and found that she was using a bell jar in her very first week of class," he says. "I mentioned that to one of the horticulturists at Lyman Plant House and they said, ''oh yes, we still have bell jars here''—probably the same ones Sylvia Plath used."
About Smith botanical garden
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